Search for the Buried Bomber

CHAPTER 26





The Clump of Hair



Just beneath the hair, I saw a dark, curled-up shadow, but it was sunk too deep in the mesh for me to make it out.

As I brought my head closer to the object, the stink grew even stronger. In my heart I already knew what it was. I brought the pliers through the gap and, gripping the clump of hair, gently pulled it away, revealing a sickeningly pale face, swollen with water. Just as I'd thought. Even though I knew what I was going to find the moment I saw the hair, it was still a shock when my suspicions were confirmed. At once I pulled my head out and began to yell toward the surface. At last, someone else rappelled down—one of the corpsmen. He descended until he was hanging just above the platform. "What is it?" he asked. I gestured for him to quiet down. Having someone else down here filled me with newfound courage. Covering my nose to block the awful smell, I leaned back in for another look.

The corpse was entirely wound in the iron netting, his uniform identical to our own. He must have belonged to the same unit as Yuan Xile. The corpsmen had just searched this goddamn area, yet none of them had discovered the dead body. Did this mean that rather than continuing deeper into the cave, Yuan Xile and her team had stopped here and descended into the sinkhole, just as we were doing?

I felt a chill in the air and drew back out of the gap. After telling the young soldier that there was a dead body beneath the platform, I yanked on the rope, signaling to the others to lift us up. Back on top everyone was stunned. This is a clue as well, said Wang Sichuan. He asked me if I'd recognized who it was. I shook my head, but seeing as he'd died here, the sinkhole probably didn't lead anywhere good. We'd better lift the corpse out and take a look first, I said. Then we could figure out our next move.

We spent the next three hours taking turns cutting away the iron mesh that bound the body. By the time we'd raised it up, all of us stunk of death from head to toe. The man's hair was very long and covered his face. The face, although slightly swollen with water, remained well defined. He had very dark skin and looked to be about forty—he was probably the team elder. Wang Sichuan had been looking closely at the corpse. Once we washed its face clean, his expression abruptly changed.

"My God," he stammered, "I know this guy. How did he end up here?" When he said the name, our faces all turned white. We stared at the corpse, none of us daring to believe it was true.

Forgive me for not revealing his name here. Within the world of geological prospecting, he was a famous expert, really more of a geologist than a prospector. In the history books, it states that he defected to the Soviet Union, but in reality he died a martyr's death, here in the depths of the cave. Given the man's identity, it became apparent that the quality of the first team was superior to anything we'd imagined. Had their standards been any higher, the only people left to include would have been legends and icons like Li Siguang and Huang Jiqing. We were stunned. If these were the people Old Cat was rescuing, it was a grand mission indeed.

Wang Sichuan searched the corpse's pockets, but they were all empty. Next we inspected the body, hoping to learn how he'd died. He appeared to lack any external injuries, but his extremities—especially the fingers and toes—had taken on a greenish hue. Stranger than that, the gums in his wide-open mouth had all turned black and his entire body twitched. He was in a severe state of rigor mortis.

"Seems like he was poisoned," I said, basing my judgment on folk knowledge.

Several people nodded their heads. What about poison gas, said Wang Sichuan. He suggested the Japanese had hoarded chemical weapons down below and they had begun to leak. It was hard to deny this possibility. In fact, after considering it a moment, the correctness of it struck me like a revelation. Yes, I thought, that's exactly what happened. What if this cave was actually one of the sites where the Japanese stored their chemical weapons? To hide the fact they'd used them during the war, they'd buried those it was too late to destroy down this sinkhole. As for the plane, maybe it had only been transported here by chance. At the time of the Japanese surrender, war criminals were said to have revealed that nearly 2 million chemical warheads were secretly hidden around China. To this day the Japanese have divulged neither the locations of these bombs nor their total amount. It's rumored the majority are scattered across what was once Manchuria.

After Japanese prospectors discovered and reported the underground river, their superiors must have realized that, although they'd located no mineral resources, this spot was suitable for storing chemical weapons. They then constructed a weapons storehouse within the cave. As this area was within the defensive zone maintained by the Japanese military against the Soviet Union, there were clearly strategic reasons for storing chemical weapons here as well. On the face of it, this explanation seemed entirely rational.

Then, as quickly as the thought occurred to me, I realized how unlikely it was. Why would the Japanese have bothered to haul their weapons so deep into the forest? Concealing them like this didn't seem worth the effort. How much time would it take to transport chemical weapons to such a remote place? Moreover, using an underground river as a storehouse was patently unsafe. No matter what, a dry cave would have been found for such an operation. The deputy squad leader agreed this probably wasn't the case. According to him, the netting beneath the platform was a measure to prevent workers from escaping. He pointed out that the "No Entry" sign suggested that an as yet unexplored area lay below. If it were gas bombs down there, the sign would have said something different.

Everyone let fly with a hundred different opinions at once. There was another problem as well, Wang Sichuan pointed out. How had this person managed to die on the underside of the platform? He couldn't have been swept down there by the water. He would have landed atop the iron platform, not under it. There was only one possibility: In his final moments, he'd attempted to head back the way he'd come, but the strength of the poison had blurred his senses. He'd tangled himself up past any point of extrication, and there, at last, he died.

It now seemed as if not only had the earlier team descended into the sinkhole, but something terrible had happened to them down there. Had the person who slipped me the note already known about this?

After we'd covered the corpse with a sleeping bag, Wang Sichuan said we had no choice but to go down there and investigate. We were on to something, he said. And if these were the people that Old Cat was here to rescue, then he had already gone the wrong way. Having been given a clue, we couldn't just ignore it. We placed country above all else in those years, and, given that people's lives were at stake, none of us felt the slightest hesitation about completing the job in Old Cat's stead.

"There's probably poison gas down there," said Wang Sichuan. "We have to be extremely careful. Since we don't have any gas or protective masks, we'd better prepare some wet towels."

In the end, we all tore off pieces of cloth to use as masks. Thinking back on it now, it sounds so naive, believing that these would actually protect us, but back then, that's what they'd taught us in Attack Preparation class: hide under your desks if there's nuclear war, and a wet towel is a replacement for gas masks. Anyway, we geological prospectors weren't used to using gas masks. Any caverns that produce poison gas are also generally combustible. What use would a mask be? You'd be blown to smithereens long before the gas had time to get to you.

We passed one by one through the breach in the iron platform. The deputy squad leader led the way down to the staircase-shaped slope that lay below. We continued down for a very long way. The sides of the cave had been washed so slick that the moment you stopped paying attention you'd fall. Making our way with great care, we soon arrived at a narrow tunnel with eroded limestone walls. Running water covered the floor. Although this tributary was still expanding, it was still too small to be called anything but a subterranean brook. The water rose no higher than our ankles, and the space was so narrow we had to stoop to proceed.

As expected, there were few signs of Japanese presence down here. After we'd been walking for some ten minutes, covering our noses with cloth all the while, one of the young soldiers suddenly paused and said something was wrong. We all stopped and looked at him. What is it? we asked. He didn't respond, but used his flashlight to illuminate his boots. Then, somewhat anxiously, he rolled up the bottom of his pants. His legs were covered in a black, uneven mass of soft, writhing flesh. We looked closer: leeches, and already filled to bursting with his blood.