Search for the Buried Bomber

CHAPTER 45





The Message



Old Tang's voice was very calm as he spoke, but hearing him we all felt unspeakable terror. "Twenty years ago,"

he said, "a Japanese Shinzan bomber took off from a river thirty-six hundred feet below the earth's surface. It soared over an underground dam and glided into the immense void just beyond, disappearing into the limitless darkness. None of us knows what the Shinzan encountered out there, or what the pilots saw."

By itself this was crazy. Now we'd discovered a mysterious transmission had somehow come out of the darkness? Then I recalled the huge number of airdrop-ready supplies. It was obvious. This entire base had been set up to airdrop people into that abyss. Arriving some twenty years earlier, the Japanese must have asked themselves the moment they looked into the void: What is this place, what's inside, and how do we get down there? It was evident that not only had they solved this final question, they'd also sent back a message from within.

After discovering this place, the Japanese proceeded to build a vast infrastructure, then successfully used a long-range bomber to airdrop people and supplies into the abyss. And the crashed Shinzan was certainly not the first plane flown into the abyss. The small night fighter whose wreckage we discovered earlier had surely been used in some sort of trial run. Even though, in the end, the bomber crashed, the entire course of events could still be described as "magnificently insane."

I asked Old Tang what he intended to do now.

Corpsmen are different from us prospectors. Corpsmen must be rigorous, testing and verifying everything to ensure their reports are always 100 percent correct. This was the work standard promulgated by Chairman Mao. The engineering corps is forever at the forefront of the military, paving roads through mountains and building bridges across rivers. The least mistake could lead to failure and military disaster. Sure enough, Old Tang told us that they had to make completely certain that the signal was emerging from the abyss. Such a verdict could not be made without verification. That's why they'd come all the way down to the dam. Now they needed to find a way to the abyss side of the dam to look for the antenna. It was this search that had originally led them down to the warehouse level. The search-and-rescue mission had to continue as well. The situation outside the dam was unknown, so making any too-specific plans would be pointless. The corpsmen would finish the search of the dam while we prospectors stayed behind. Our job was already complete.

It's been complete for a long time, I thought to myself. There wasn't going to be some humongous oil lake at the bottom of the void. It was evident the Japanese activity here had little to do with resource prospecting. Our assignment had already been finished before we'd even entered the cave.

No one spoke in opposition to Old Tang. Old Cat said nothing, just silently drank his tea and listened to us. Looking at his expression, he seemed to feel that what we were discussing was ridiculous. At the time I couldn't have cared less what he thought. Never would I have expected that, soon enough, I would feel the same way.

With reality feeling as surreal as a nightmare, I drifted into sleep and long, vivid dreams. The vast abyss had become a tremendous mouth. I was standing atop the dam, facing into the gale-force winds and watching the abyss expand toward me. All around me the rock walls slowly corroded into the darkness. Then I was sitting in a plane, aimlessly flying through the void. There was nothing around, the flight unending.

Despite my terror, I didn't wake up. I slept for ten hours straight. At last, when it was time to eat, Wang Sichuan awoke me. Old Tang had already left with some of the others. Old Cat was gone as well. He was leading a group of corpsmen investigating the factory and warehouse. There had to be a heavy-duty freight elevator somewhere nearby. I was sure Old Cat was more than just a simple prospector, otherwise he could never have convinced Rong Aiguo to dispatch the rescue team. My intuition said this affair went far beyond my understanding. I didn't want to think about any of it anymore.

As I ate, I listened to Pei Qing and Wang Sichuan discussing the dam. They were attempting to infer what the icehouse had been used for. We had only a vague idea of the layout of the average dam, and this one was far from ordinary. The purpose of most of its installations—icehouse included—was a mystery to us. All we knew for sure was that on both sides of the dam were identical caissons, capable of transporting supplies underwater. Beneath the dam's water level was a huge icehouse filled with countless frozen bombs. Beyond that was a factory and warehouse piled high with supplies.

With his mouth full of mashed vegetables, Wang Sichuan spoke: "The way I see it, we're already at the lowest level of the dam. If they really were planning on blowing it up, then it wouldn't make sense to place the bombs anywhere but the very bottom."

But why did they freeze all the warheads? Such measures were only required for nitroglycerin, but that stuff could never be used in an artillery shell. The heat produced when the chemical was released would cause the inner warhead to explode much quicker than the outer shell, and the danger in transporting the stuff would have been too great. There was one other thing that required lowtemperature preservation: biological weapons.

While it's a fact that the Japanese conducted biological warfare throughout China, most civilians have only heard of the atrocities of Unit 731—the inhuman Japanese biological research center. Having trekked through China's forests and explored her caves, we prospectors know Unit 731 was only the tip of the iceberg. In my dozens of years on the job, I've come across innumerable cement structures located deep in the forests of the Northeast. All had been built by the Japanese during their invasion of China, and every last one was basically demolished. Nonetheless, evidence of dungeons and dissecting rooms could still be discerned. A comrade in arms told me that, in addition to these research labs, the scale of germ warfare in China was far greater still.

These bombs were probably not biological weapons. What purpose would they have served? The Japanese objective in the area was clear. Why line the base of the dam with weapons like that? I returned to my original question: What had the Japanese planned to do with all those bombs? A thought then occurred to me. What would happen if the refrigeration compressors stopped working? Even though the temperature here was very low, the ice would eventually begin to melt. And then what would become of the warheads?

The icehouse didn't seem as large as I'd thought. I could hear the sounds of loud movement from that direction. Every now and then soldiers would return. These new recruit tenderfoots were so cold the mucus streamed from their nostrils. They really were just kids. The wait was very dull. We chatted for a bit, but Wang Sichuan couldn't keep still. Soon he cried out that we should go see what they were up to. We wrapped overcoats tightly around ourselves, then walked back up the stairs, through the pitch-black tunnel, and into the icehouse. We headed toward the sounds. We'd taken no more than twenty steps when I realized something was different. It seemed to have grown colder. Frost had already formed across my eyebrows. That had never happened before. It felt as if we'd been caught in a blizzard in the Greater Khingan range. Before long I could see the shape of someone up ahead. It was Old Tang stamping his feet and smashing something into the ground. They were breaking a hole in the ice.

Several privates were wielding simple tools, sparing no effort as they smashed them down. They didn't seem to be having much effect. They'd produced only a thin layer of powdery ice. Still, what they were doing was dangerous. There were bombs below.

I walked over to Old Tang. "You'd better be careful," I told him. "What is the purpose of all this?"

Shivering, his lips purple from the cold, he told me to look at what was underneath the ice. Beneath our feet I saw a large black shadow, but because the top layer had already been smashed rough and uneven, I couldn't tell what I was looking at. It certainly wasn't a bomb. This thing was huge. I took a lap around it. The shadow was shaped like a giant paper clip. All along its length were numerous U-shaped protrusions. I gasped. It was a large-scale radio antenna. We knew one of these had to be around here somewhere, but what was it doing frozen beneath the ice?

On closer inspection I realized that the antenna wasn't the only thing down there. There was a second shadow, also giant, although comparatively dim. It must have been buried in a deeper layer of ice. This shadow was three times as large as the antenna and appeared to be a massive strainerlike disc.

"What the hell is that?" I asked Old Tang, shivering and pointing at the monster paper clip. "Is it the antenna you're looking for? What's it doing in the ice?"

"It's not the antenna," he replied. "This thing's got a nickname. It's called the 'Würzburg Giant.' "

"What? What giant?"

Putting it simply, he said, the Würzburg Giant is a kind of tracking radar the Japanese imported from Germany. Its main function was to automatically control searchlights during nighttime air defense. While in China, the Japanese hadn't needed such advanced nighttime tracking technology, so you don't see too many of them. Most were set up on the Inner Mongolian and Pacific Ocean fronts. China later unsuccessfully attempted to copy the device's design. The technology eventually died out, but during the war it was the most advanced tracking equipment around. Old Tang said that he too had been shocked to come across a shadow this large, but the thing itself was probably not as big as it looked. Different thicknesses at different layers of the ice distorted the images below. The device would have been used for guided navigation, though this one might be just a spare. Precision guidance would have been a necessity for flying a plane down here.

Wang Sichuan asked Old Tang what they planned to do with the thing once they dug it up. Could this have something to do with the telegram?

"It's more than just that," said Old Tang. He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. On it were several rough pencil sketches. Old Tang's group had been searching the icehouse, looking for the caisson controls and attempting to gain a preliminary understanding of the place. The sketches were representations of the icehouse's layout. The compression engines and electrical circuits that surrounded the room were all marked. The shadows beneath the ice had also been clearly noted. Old Tang pointed to several spots with his pencil. "The shells that you mentioned are vast in number and spread all around the icehouse, forming a ring. In the center is the Würzburg Giant. Look at these lines here. These ladderlike shadows are the tracks used to transport the device. We also found four black shapes alongside the Würzburg Giant, each the size of a PLA truck. Those are probably the two groups of searchlights that accompany it." I nodded and he continued. "This doesn't seem extremely odd to you? Placing a guided navigation radar device at the center of a ring of bombs? What's the point of it?"

I was already much too cold to think. Wang Sichuan sneezed and said, "Could it be a trap?"

I understood what he meant. After engineering corpsmen lay land mines on the battlefield, they set up some phony target to get the enemy to approach. If the fuse covers on all these bombs had in fact been removed—meaning they were poised and ready to explode—then Wang Sichuan's suggestion did seem fairly reasonable. But a radar device in the middle—what kind of bait was that? Who were they hoping to attract? Then again, maybe they'd wanted to guide the plane to smash into the dam, destroying everything.

This didn't make any sense, but I lacked the strength to consider it any further. The icehouse was too cold. I could endure it no longer. Old Tang told us to go back to the warehouse, saying that if we really wanted to help, we could go assist Old Cat. After returning to camp, we drank several cups of hot water and didn't want to go anywhere. Something didn't seem right. I began to feel increasingly uneasy.

Then it occurred to me: perhaps the reason the Japanese abandoned this place wasn't as simple as we had thought. Nowhere in this entire system of rivers and caves had we seen any evidence suggesting the Japanese had tried to destroy the base. Everything had been left in good order. A great quantity of supplies remained neatly stacked and essentially unblemished. Even the various files and documents were left intact. We'd found a pilot's corpse within the Shinzan, but where were the other members of the flight crew? Why had the corpse been left in the pilothouse? I don't know whether the cold from outside had penetrated the warehouse or if my thoughts were just that unsettling, but I began to shiver uncontrollably. I still remember that feeling. It wasn't fear, just the shock piled on shock of limitless discoveries coming to light one after the other. A thought flashed across my mind. What if this base had already been abandoned by the time the Shinzan flew back?

There must have been something strange about my expression, because both Wang Sichuan and Pei Qing were looking at me oddly. Wang Sichuan asked whether it wouldn't be best for me to sleep a little longer. When one's body is in revolt, he said, it isn't wise to push it.

I shook my ahead. "What do you guys think?" I asked them. "How long did that Shinzan fly around the abyss before it returned?"

"What do you mean?" asked Wang Sichuan.

"Is it possible," I continued, "that after the Shinzan flew into the abyss there was some kind of emergency up here and everyone was forced to leave, so that when it flew back out there was already no one left? With no guidance from the ground, the pilot would definitely crash. His corpse was then left behind in the wreckage of the plane, while those still living among the flight crew disappeared to who knows where."

The problem was that I had no idea how long a Shinzan could stay aloft. Later, I checked. Flying at full speed, it could cruise for ten to fourteen hours. Given that this base spanned the entire cave system, evacuating it would take at least one hundred hours. But Wang Sichuan wasn't one for details. He agreed that it seemed reasonable enough. Pei Qing wasn't so sure. "Based on the way the place looks," he said, "it hardly seems as if there was an emergency. They didn't dismantle the transmitter. Even the codebook was left behind. Even with an army on their doorstep, they wouldn't have behaved so carelessly."

It felt not like they'd evacuated, but as if everyone on the base had suddenly disappeared. Old Tang had said something like this as well. It seemed like the Japanese had planned on returning, he'd said. It was as if they were only handing the base over temporarily, but then they'd never come back. Something beyond our imaginations had happened here. The state of this base in its final dozen or so hours remained absolutely unfathomable. And it seemed highly likely that whatever had happened, it didn't begin until after the Shinzan flew into the abyss.

The more I thought about it, the less I understood. After standing back up, I went to look at the sand table, hoping to draw some clue from it. Then Wang Sichuan suddenly let out a quizzical "Huh?" He raised his head and began to look around. I did the same, only to discover that he wasn't looking, he was listening. From someplace far overhead, the air-defense warning rang out once more. It was a deep sound and very faint. If you didn't listen closely, it was easy to mix up with the noise from the exhaust fan.

Pei Qing looked at his watch. The alarm continued to ring for a long time, then all of a sudden it stopped. He relaxed. "It rang for three minutes. This means the state of warning has been canceled."

I breathed a sigh of relief. Buddha preserve us, I said to myself. Things up top are finally getting better. Before I could finish my thought, there came a great noise of machinery springing to life. The sound was all around us, now rising, now falling, seeming to resound from every corner of the dam. Several young soldiers rushed animatedly from the recesses of the warehouse. Good news, they told us. The dam had finished releasing the floodwater. Now, they believed, the mist would soon retreat below the warning line.

Wang Sichuan was about to ask how they knew this when there was a commotion over by the entrance to the icehouse. Several of Old Tang's soldiers appeared, carrying some object. They called out for us to help. The thing was terribly heavy. Even with four of them carrying it, they were barely doing more than dragging it along the ground. We hustled toward them. It was a great chunk of ice, the size of a coffin. Wang Sichuan shouted for me to hurry up. Gritting his teeth, he put his hands underneath it and together they lifted it off the ground. Pei Qing and I tried to help, but the privates told us they were OK. More were coming, they said. Another group of soldiers hefting a second slab appeared only a moment later. I called some of the others over and, giving it all we had, we lifted it up. It felt uncommonly heavy. Then I saw something was frozen inside.

We brought the ice block over to camp and set it down. The force of the fall smashed several inches off the bottom. I asked what they'd dug up. The soldiers rolled the block over so I could see. A corpse was frozen inside.

"It's one of the goddamn invaders," said a soldier. "We just found him, frozen to death in the ice."

The corpse had its arms wrapped around itself, its appearance haggard. The irregular surface of the ice distorted the figure within, but I could tell he was draped with an overcoat, his body small and frail. He looked no different than a child.