Search for the Buried Bomber

CHAPTER 33





The Iron Chamber



There was something supremely valiant about the way the deputy squad leader spoke that final sentence, like some hero in one of those old War of Liberation movies. Unfortunately, I was roused too late. All at once he dropped away. A split second later, I instinctively shot my arm out to grab him, but his fall had been too sudden. He dropped directly onto the nearly vertical wall of the dam and slid downward. I froze, terrified, then, in a flash, I lost my balance and very nearly tumbled down beside him. Fortunately, the dam was sloped, if only just barely. After hitting the wall, he slid no more than eight or nine feet before he managed to grab on to a section of the iron ladder's concrete base. This alone stopped him from immediately falling to his death, but his momentum was too great. He was barely able to grip the concrete, and his hands began to slip.

I yelled to him not to panic, I was coming to get him. I got down on my stomach and leaned over the side, but my arms weren't long enough to cover even half the distance. I leaned out farther, until half my body was over the edge, then farther still, but even when I was about to slide down, there still remained a huge gap between us. The deputy squad leader was a soldier, his strength and reflexes far superior to those of the average man. Seeing me stretch out my hand, he kicked off the wall with his feet, using this split second of momentum to leap upward, just high enough to grab hold of my hand. I took a deep breath and tried as hard as I could to pull him up, but I had misjudged both my strength and my position. I was extended too far over the side. His weight yanked me free from my perch and together we began to slide over the edge. Panicking, I swung my free arm desperately, but the way I was stretched out, even if I'd managed to grab something, I would never have been able to hold on to it. My surprise lasted for only a moment, then the deputy squad leader pulled me down. In that instant I saw his eyes register some complex emotion, but my mind was completely blank. Everything had happened much too fast.

My chin immediately scraped against the rough concrete. I somersaulted and began rolling downward. My head knocked against the iron ladder, sending a terrible burst of pain through me. I reached out to grab it, but it was already too late. Down we tumbled, covering forty or fifty feet in the blink of an eye, all the way to the source of the searchlight. In a flash I saw a square window open on the side of the dam, a beam of white light shooting out of it. I couldn't open my eyes in the glare, and then I'd already rolled past.

God protect me, it was then that I felt a sudden jolt. My shoulder tightened and somehow I stopped falling. I shook my head and looked up. A vertical line of steel bars, their sharp ends pointing out, jutted from the wall of the dam. They were set into the concrete two palm-lengths apart from each other, probably installed while the dam was being built to give workers something to hold on to. The end of each had been curved into a hook. The strap of the canteen I'd so recently plundered had looped around one of these steel hooks and had actually managed to hold me up.

The deputy squad leader was nowhere to be seen. The flashlight and torches we'd prepared were all lost. Darkness surrounded me. If the searchlight had not been so close by, I really would have been finished. I composed myself and pulled myself up the canteen strap. The hooked steel bars were very strong, but so narrow they supported only my toes. Trembling, I climbed from one to the next until I'd reached the bay window where the searchlight shined. As I grabbed on to it, I found that all my strength had left me. I could exert myself no further. This was a very familiar feeling. I'd probably broken a bone. Just as I began to give up, a hand suddenly extended from within the window, grabbed hold of me, and pulled me inside.

I slumped to the ground, barely able to keep my head up. I saw only a faint figure behind the beam of the searchlight, but from that glance alone I could tell this person was very small and thin. Definitely not Wang Sichuan. At first I believed my eyes had to be mistaken—I was sure Wang Sichuan had been controlling the light. The shadowy figure then moved out of the darkness behind the tail of the searchlight and walked over. He was wearing an oldfashioned gas mask. After looking me over he helped me up. Who was this person? Some Japanese man who'd been left behind? My next thought was to hide somehow. He called out to me, his voice made incomprehensible by the gas mask. Though he made several attempts at communication, I could only shake my head. At last he removed the mask. My mouth dropped open. It was the young soldier we'd left behind to look after Chen Luohu and Yuan Xile.

After getting over the shock, I felt a surge of happiness. I tried to give him a hug, but my arm lacked even the tiniest bit of strength. Instead I asked him what had happened to the other two. He ignored my question, and with an agitated expression said only: "Come with me right now!" He put the mask back on and supported me as we moved toward the back of the room. I told him the deputy squad leader was probably still out there, that I didn't know whether he'd fallen all the way or was still hanging somewhere. The soldier nodded and told me that he'd go look in a moment. We continued on. The space here was illuminated by a dark-red emergency light. This was likely the dam's machine level. The floor was made of iron grates and concrete. Through the grates I could see the river and a gigantic piece of old-fashioned machinery. It looked like a huge iron spindle cast in concrete. Rusted iron pipes and power cables wrapped around it, crisscrossing as they extended upward. At the end of the room was an iron wall with a circular iron door built into it. The door was airtight, triple-proofed, and rusted the color of a fried-dough twist. The private turned the spinner handle in the middle of the door, the assistance mechanism kicked in, and the door swung open. He helped me inside.

We entered a ready room. Japanese-style hazmat suits hung on the walls. When the door closed, the air in the room was automatically changed. The soldier ran ahead to the end of the room, where there waited an identical triple-proofed door. He opened it in the same manner as before. Inside was a sealed chamber smelling of rust. Everything was made of iron. There was an ironwork chair and writing desk with a mess of papers stacked atop it. Maps were hung all around, and a Japanese slogan was draped across one of the walls. Small cup-shaped emergency lights lit the room. The young soldier told me to wait here, that he would return in a moment. Yuan Xile was shrunk into a corner of the room, her body curled into a ball. Chen Luohu sat on the iron chair. When he saw me, he nervously stood up. His eyes were all bloodshot, his mouth opening and closing, not knowing what to say.

I too was at a loss for words. Never would I have expected to find them here. We'd split up less than a day ago, but already it was as if a lifetime had passed. Far too much had happened. I asked Chen Luohu how they'd gotten here. He said that when the river started to rise, they'd blown up the oxskin raft and set out. With the river at a high point, a number of new branches had opened up. The water was too fast and they'd been swept down one of the branches. In the end, they found themselves here. Then Chen Luohu's responses stopped making sense. He seemed to have reached his mental breaking point. Not that it was his fault. If I hadn't already been scared into a kind of numbness when the water rose, who knows how I would have reacted when I saw the Shinzan?

We were silent for a moment. "What about everyone else?" he asked me. "Have the higher-ups sent in a team to rescue us?"

I didn't know how to explain what I had experienced and could give him only a rough idea of what had happened. Hearing that Old Cat had come, his expression changed and all at once he relaxed. Then it occurred to me: If this place was our assignment's intended destination, then where had that strange telegram led the others to?

As I was about to say this, the triple-proofed door opened again. In rushed the young soldier, the deputy squad leader slumped across his back. Covering his nose and panting heavily, he yelled to us, "Close the door now!" Before I could react, Chen Luohu had already jumped to his feet and swung it shut. Together we spun the handle dozens of times without stopping. At last we heard it click. Only then did we drop our hands and relax. Through the glass aperture atop the door I looked into the airlock. The door at the far end was wide open and gray mist floated slowly in, filling the room.