Search for the Buried Bomber

CHAPTER 41





Out of the Abyss



By no means am I familiar with the number of precise calculations required to get a heavy-duty bomber to take off within a cave, but if you're talking about flying a bomber this massive back out of that abyss and then bringing it in for a landing—well, I think I can imagine some degree of the difficulty involved. You'd need to maneuver the plane in toward the mouth of the river, a challenging task in itself, but then, to complete the descent into such a small and narrow space—that's just too much to ask. The length of the runway wouldn't be a problem—towropes could be used to slow the plane down—the main issue is that the roof of the cave gives you no room for error. Mess up and you're scrap metal. From the beginning the Japanese obviously hadn't planned on a smooth landing. Those buffer bags had been in preparation for a crash, and that's just what happened. To think of that fearful emptiness was terrifying. How daring those little devils had been! And I wondered, just what had the pilot seen down there?

Then, from behind me, came the sound of Wang Sichuan's voice. I turned. He was walking toward me, his face covered with dirt and dust, dragging back our pale little animal man twisted into an extremely uncomfortable position. Wang Sichuan's strength was immense. You weren't breaking free once he seized you. The man had stopped resisting, and it looked like Wang Sichuan was dragging along a corpse.

I hurried over. Wang Sichuan pressed the man to the ground, swearing, "Goddamn, that wasn't easy. It's black as a crow's feather out there, and this son of a bitch runs faster than a rabbit. He almost got away. Lucky my eyesight's not bad."

I shined my flashlight over the man's face. I'd never seen him before. He was ghastly pale and soaked with sweat. Maybe it was from the chase, maybe he was always like this. He stared at me, his eyes bloodshot and his whole body quivering. His eyes stabbed at me with limitless hatred. Surprisingly, his uniform was different from Yuan Xile's and the corpsmen's we'd come across earlier. He was wearing a Lenin suit with a long jacket and a cloth belt. He didn't look like a soldier. This sort of attire was more like what Li Siguang and the rest from the Chinese Academy of Sciences had worn in their day. Maybe he was some kind of expert. We searched his pockets and found an employee identification card. His name was Su Zhenhua, and sure enough, he was from the Ministry of Geology.

"Seems they were a lot more choosy with the first group," said Wang Sichuan, an angry look on his face. "The standards were way higher."

Once the Soviets had left, Yuan Xile was one of the most important of the so-called Russian ass-wipers. She was on the same level as Wang Ming or Bo Gu during the Land Reforms—real high. The Ministry of Geology wasn't just about geology. Some people had their positions because they took orders directly from the old men at the very top. They were special emissaries, lapdogs like Li De, the foreigner sent by the Russian Communist Party to boss around the Chinese Communist Party. I hated anybody resembling a special emissary, but I could always sense their presence whenever anything important happened.

I called out "Su Zhenhua" several times, but he just stared at me, his eyes evincing deep hatred. I turned his face in my hands. It was just as with Yuan Xile. He'd gone mad. What the hell had happened to the first team? Anyone who wasn't dead was crazy.

Wang Sichuan was at a loss himself. "How are we supposed to take him with us?" he asked me. "This guy's stubborn as a bull. The moment I loosen my grip, he's gone for sure. Are we going to have to tie him up?"

I didn't know what to do either. Let's take him back to the second chamber, I thought. We can have Ma Zaihai look after him and then figure it out. Just as I was about to speak, Su Zhenhua squeezed a sentence through clenched teeth. His speech was garbled, the accent unplaceable. I hadn't the slightest clue what he was saying, but Wang Sichuan's expression changed at once.

"What did he say?" I asked.

"That was Mongolian," Wang Sichuan told me in a low voice. "He said, 'Beware of shadows, there are ghosts inside!' "

This was the only sentence Su Zhenhua ever spoke in our presence. Given his expression at the time, we didn't know whether it was a warning or a curse. From then on, he continued only to stare at us, the look in his eyes like he wanted to flay and swallow us alive. I had no idea what he meant. Ghosts in the shadows? If you were to say there were ghosts, this I could understand. With everyone who'd died in this underground base, it wouldn't be so strange to find some here. But ghosts in the shadows? Which shadows was he talking about? Could all these shadows, stretching one into the next under the flashlight beam, really have ghosts in them? Now that shadows had been mentioned, I suddenly recalled the dark shapes frozen into the pools back in the icehouse. Those things gave me a strange feeling. Were these the ghosts that Su Zhenhua was talking about? But we were materialists, no way could we believe in supernatural stuff like that.

Wang Sichuan and I talked it over for a moment. He too thought we should bring Su Zhenhua back to the second chamber and have Ma Zaihai look after him. We seemed to be on the right track, he said. We should also make a thorough search of all the supplies stored back here. We were running low. "If that's the case," I said, "I can go get Ma Zaihai and the deputy squad leader and bring them here. You see if there isn't something we can use to start a fire. We can boil some water and warm up when we get back." Indeed, this place was much preferable to the second chamber.

Wang Sichuan agreed. With all the fuel tanks lying around, starting a fire would be a piece of cake. I wrapped my clothes around me and told him to be careful. "There might be explosives here," I said. "Don't let me return to find the place already blown to smithereens."

Wang Sichuan laughed. "I was lighting campfires out on the grasslands while you were still sleeping on a kang," he said. "Don't talk such nonsense."

I jogged a short distance, passed through the iron passage, and after making my way back through the huge gate at the other end, headed for the second chamber. The sweat from our pursuit of Su Zhenhua froze to my skin. The only thing on my mind was getting to Ma Zaihai and the deputy squad leader as quickly as possible, bringing them back with me, and drinking hot water until I felt better. Not once did I think that something might go wrong over such a short distance. I ran back through the mist, relying on memory and never pausing, until I suddenly noticed that everything looked exactly the same no matter which way I turned. At first I wasn't aware of what had happened, but after running for another ten-plus minutes, the powdery mist continued to spread all about me and a limitless ice field stretched into the distance. We hadn't left a single goddamn marker on the way out. I was lost.

Losing my way turned out to be an important link in that whole chain of events. The area was vast and open, my field of vision drastically limited. Without some kind of sign, it was almost a certainty that I would soon find myself lost and directionless amid the mist. This was hardly the worst thing in the world, and I didn't let it bother me. Only for the first few minutes did I feel any annoyance. Still, given my exhaustion at the time, it was obvious that the longer I stayed here, the more precarious the situation would become. I chose a direction and continued on. At the time I assumed that, so long as I kept going forward, even if I didn't find the iron-grate walkway at the room's center, I would at least run into one of its walls. As expected, after walking for two or three minutes, the frost-bedecked face of a high cement wall appeared from out of the mist. I roughly oriented myself, then turned around, climbed a cement ridge running perpendicular to my previous direction, and began to follow the wall. The second chamber should be up ahead, I thought. With the cold already unbearable, I began to speed up.

The giant machines placed along the base of the wall, as well as their great masses of pipes and power cables plunging into the nearby ice, were caked beneath a layer of frost. The whole scene had become one huge, uneven, frost-covered heap. These disparately sized pipes all snaked across the walkway, making it much higher and more difficult to traverse than the one Wang Sichuan and I had crossed earlier. Frost thick and soft covered the pool that stretched beside me and made the ice much less slippery. It was easier to walk on the ice than to pick my way among the refrigeration pipes. On the ice I went faster and faster, not paying any attention to what was beneath my feet, certain that the ice was solid. I was wrong. I had walked about ten minutes when, all of a sudden, the ice beneath my feet gave way. The ground sloped down before me and I began to fall. I swung my body back around and squatted down heavily. I wasn't sliding too fast and was able to hold myself steady. A giant black void with steep sides had appeared out of the cold mist in the space just in front of me. Someone had dug a deep pit in the ice.

Actually, the hole was not that big, about the size of a PLA truck. It was hardly necessary to use the word giant, but the pit really was deep, likely reaching all the way to the cement bottom. Inside was a vague cloud of mist. I couldn't tell what was down below. We'd all cut holes in ice before. It was necessary if you wanted to go fishing in the Greater Khingans during wintertime. Once the ice was a certain thickness, cutting a hole was no easy task. I could imagine the time and effort that must have gone into making this one. I doubt it was a one-person job. I rubbed the edge of the pit. Cracks spiderwebbed outward. It had been smashed open with no more than shovels and brute strength. Who had done this? Su Zhenhua and the others?

It seemed likely. I didn't know what accident befell them after making it here, but before it occurred they were certain to have explored the place. Having seen these strange ice pools and the shadows frozen underneath, someone would have suggested they dig one up and take a look. If our team hadn't encountered all we did and had arrived here intact, I'm sure I would have had the same idea. Just what exactly is down there, I thought to myself, and had they managed to dig it up?

I squatted back down and shined my flashlight into the pit. By disposition I'm fairly cautious. I was not even thinking of jumping down and taking a look. If Wang Sichuan were here, he'd probably already have been on the bottom. The bottom was jagged and uneven. After reaching a certain point, the excavation seemed to have stopped. I could see the indistinct shape of one of the shadows frozen in the ice, half of it already exposed. They must have stopped digging right after the thing appeared.

I became more and more curious. Why hadn't they continued? I wondered. Now I considered jumping down, but a six-foot drop into an ice pit would be quite dangerous. I'd have a rough time climbing back out and would risk freezing to death inside. There's a kind of pitfall in the Northeast constructed just like this. It's intentionally dug only a few feet deeper than the height of a bear, so when one falls in, it's unable to escape.

Just as I was hesitating about whether I should first go and find Ma Zaihai or just descend directly into the pit, I felt a slight breeze behind me. I was so cold I'd become sensitive to even the lightest wind. Shivering, I made to turn around and see where it was coming from, but before I could move, I was given a ferocious push from behind. I tried to squat back down, but couldn't keep my balance. I tumbled headlong into the pit.