Search for the Buried Bomber

CHAPTER 47





The End of the Warehouse



Whatever message the slogan was trying to convey was lost on me—probably it was "Safety in Production" or something along those lines. I couldn't believe the warehouse had actually come to an end. It wasn't as big as I'd imagined. More importantly, if the warehouse really did end right here, then where had Old Cat and the rest of them disappeared to? There was nowhere else to go. It wouldn't take ten hours to search something like this. The concrete wall was quite long. We walked along it till we hit another wall. Still there was nothing to find, nor were there traces of any activity. The others seemed to have disappeared.

Ma Zaihai began to worry, but as usual Wang Sichuan refused to give up. He walked back along the wall, saying, "Impossible. These people are alive. They haven't conjured themselves away or vanished into thin air."

I was sure that something fishy was going on. Then I spied the tarp-covered piles of goods. Could there be another exit hidden beneath one of these? I wondered. I walked back the way we'd come, looking for any materials that appeared to have been disturbed. Sure enough, a net fixed atop a length of supplies had been pulled apart and the rivets holding down the sheets of tarpaulin underneath loosened. We began turning over the tarps one after another, when suddenly Ma Zaihai cried out. Built into the concrete floor beneath one of them was an iron double door, similar to the one we'd seen back in the cave, though much smaller. This door was not welded down. On it was printed some strange symbol, the color already faded.

Wang Sichuan wanted to open it up, but Ma Zaihai blocked his way. "Engineer Wang, Engineer Wu," he said, "I should go first. That symbol means high voltage. The whole level is probably filled with power cables. I'd guess the wires for the entire place run through it." He had us back up and wrapped his hands in the tarp. The door was almost two feet thick. After lifting one of the doors halfway, he nearly collapsed. The two of us hurriedly helped him push the door until it rested on the concrete floor. Opening half the double door made an opening wide enough for us to enter. We jumped down to the platform below and shined our flashlights inside. The ground was covered in power cables, each with the circumference of a rice bowl. The temperature was extremely low, the cables all encased in a thick shell of ice. A ladder led down. We could see someone had already knocked the ice from its sides.

"They really went down there," said Ma Zaihai, his eyes wide.

"Where does this place connect to?" I asked.

"A recess like this connects anywhere that needs electricity," said Ma Zaihai. "It makes maintenance much more convenient. These recesses are generally only found in permanent fortifications where they can be hidden in the base's structure. If you set one up in some temporary base on the front and someone throws a grenade down the tunnel, there goes all the power. This doesn't look temporary at all and they obviously took measures to conceal it. When the devils built this dam, they clearly assumed it would be in use for more than twenty years."

I nodded. The Japanese had never expected the Soviets to be so fierce. Even less could they have anticipated the atomic bomb. Without these two factors the war would have continued for another ten years.

So this was where Old Cat and the others had gone. Wang Sichuan called down several times, but there was only an echo. "What if, down there amid all those power cables, they got lost?" I asked.

"It's hard to say for sure," said Ma Zaihai, "but the structure down there shouldn't be too complex, and the path should be marked fairly clearly."

"Then let's go take a look," said Wang Sichuan as he stepped down onto the ladder.

One after another we climbed down. To avoid getting lost, we smashed the ice along the wall with our hammers. The going was rough. The ceiling was tall enough that we didn't have to worry about knocking our heads, but the floor was strewn with power cables, each of them dangerously slick. Worst of all was the cold. This place clearly connected to the icehouse. The temperature had dropped below any bearable limit, and from somewhere an exhaust fan blew cold air at us. Shivering uncontrollably, we wrapped our overcoats tightly around ourselves. The wind rushed straight down my collar and into every opening in my clothing.

"Just what exactly is that icehouse for?" asked Wang Sichuan. "And how come this windy tunnel seems just like a cooling duct?"

"That's probably what it is," said Ma Zaihai, but he was only a private. These were matters for specialists. His job was to take things apart and put them back together.

"What kind of thing needs such a f*cking cold cooling device?" said Wang Sichuan, speaking his thoughts aloud. A muffled bang suddenly rang out behind us, as if the iron door had been dropped back into place.

Wang Sichuan and I glanced at one another. Shit, I said to myself. I turned and ran like mad back the way we had come. I scrambled wildly up the ladder and climbed onto the platform where we'd first dropped in. Sure enough, the door overhead was shut. Wang Sichuan pushed with all his might, but the door wouldn't budge. He looked at me, his face furious and panic-stricken, then swore violently. Whoever was outside had not only shut the door, he'd locked it as well. I was dumbfounded. The spy! He existed and was trying to get us!

I could have slapped myself. How the hell had I been so careless? If Old Cat and the rest had come this way, then why was the iron door still hidden beneath the tarpaulin? Because someone else hadn't wanted us to discover it! Everyone can get muddle-headed sometimes, but I've always felt myself to be a generally bright individual. Ma Zaihai had already lifted the tarp from the door when I first saw it, but how could I have failed to consider what it meant? There was far too much on my mind at the time.

Wang Sichuan grabbed the gun and made to fire it upward. At once Ma Zaihai and I snatched it back from him. This iron door was two feet thick and probably lined with some blastproof material that not even a grenade would penetrate, much less a gun. The bullet would just bounce off it and slice right through us.

Again we tried to force it upward. We cried out. I understood at last what had befallen Old Cat and the others. We were being plotted against. The door being blastproof meant it was basically soundproof as well. We could ruin our larynxes and still no one would hear. Unwilling to give up, Wang Sichuan twice bashed his shoulder into the door, very nearly wrenching his waist. The door was too heavy. Smashing against it wasn't going to do the least bit of damage to the bolt.

Wang Sichuan let fly with a string of Mongolian curses. A burst of cold wind blew through, causing my teeth to chatter. If we didn't find a way out of here quick, we'd freeze to death. Old Cat and the others had been trapped for at least ten hours. Who knew if they'd ever managed to find a way out? Another burst of wind came blowing through, so fierce it took my breath away. Having no choice, the three of us set out with our backs to the wind, Wang Sichuan calling out for Old Cat and Old Tang.

In today's cities these electrical canals are everywhere, often filled with stagnant water and fiber-optic telecommunications cables as well as electricity. At each intersection in the tunnel, there's a manhole leading up to the surface. For a while we encountered no such intersection. As we walked, we pondered whether we'd gone the wrong way. Should we turn around and face into the wind? Perhaps it would lead to the icehouse. But unlike inside that giant freezer, at least here the temperature was endurable. The farther we went in that direction, the more the temperature would drop and the wind increase. Something bad was sure to happen, and not one of us was willing to find out what. Avoiding cold and seeking warmth are bodily instincts, impossible to defy. Now that I think about it, people were in excellent physical shape back then. Despite the harshness of that environment, even someone like me was able to carry on.

After walking through that icy channel for about half an hour, we came upon the first intersection. A shaft led upward. Wang Sichuan pushed several times on the iron door overhead. It didn't move an inch. It too was locked.

"For fear that the enemy will take advantage of these tunnels," said Ma Zaihai, "regulations generally stipulate that all openings be locked up."

Wang Sichuan cursed. "And if they're all locked, then what?"

I patted him on the back. "Relax, there's always a way out."

But in my heart I was unsure. Choosing a direction, we smashed several marks in the ice and continued on. I prayed, whether to Buddha or Tengri it didn't matter, to bless us and ensure our Japanese adversary had forgotten to lock just one or even half of an iron door.

The tunnels were hardly complex, but they were very long. It seemed as if all the wires for the entire dam ran through here. It took at least half an hour between each intersection. After three hours we'd found only four doors, each locked more securely than the last. The path ahead was pitch-black. Our eyebrows were covered in a layer of ice. Crystals had spread throughout our hair. Our hands and feet had gone numb. We were in a whole lot deeper than we'd imagined. That's not idle talk . Wang Sichuan's iron club had frozen to his hand without his noticing. As he switched it to his left hand, he tore off a layer of skin. Old Cat and the rest had surely found themselves in a predicament just like this. I hoped they'd already found a way out. If they hadn't, then things didn't look good for us. We were running out of options. All we could do was keep going.

Then, after we'd walked for a few more hours, a number of circular holes appeared in the concrete wall, each half as tall as a man. Not one of the power cables passed through them.

"Air vents," said Ma Zaihai. We looked inside. There was light at the end.