Search for the Buried Bomber

CHAPTER 49





Control Room



We'd all been through boot camp. We'd all been told countless times before target practice never to point our guns at anyone else. How many stories had we heard of someone dying when a weapon accidentally went off ? Even an empty gun could eject a firing pin fast enough to kill a man. So I found looking into the black hole of the gun muzzle stupendously irritating. At once I brought my hand up, yelling, "What are you doing? Put the weapon down. You want it to go off and kill me?"

He didn't seem concerned in the slightest. "It's fine," he said. "I unloaded all the bullets and the safety is on." He handed it to me.

I grabbed the rifle and looked it over. The bullet magazine really was gone. I was amazed. When had he taken it out? Then I remembered that he'd taken all the bullets out before he knocked out the iron grate with the butt of the rifle. "You need my help for what?" I asked him. "What is it you really want to do? Did you stop caring about your life when you saw the antenna? This thing isn't going to lead us out of here."

He undid his Sam Browne belt and tied one end to the rifle strap. "Company Commander Tang said the whole reason they came down here was to find this antenna. If they took the same route we did, then they too would have come across it and would surely have climbed over to check it out. If they went a different way, I still want to take a quick look at it. Then, once we find them, we can all leave straightaway and won't have to come back down here.

"And you should let me go," he continued, "because I'm an engineering corpsman. Although you two are, of course, much more learned than I, there are nonetheless some details that only I will understand. Let me take a look at the antenna. I might be able to figure out where Company Commander Tang is right now."

He said this so sincerely, so solemnly, that I couldn't help but trust him. Wang Sichuan jumped over, landing just beside me. "What's going on?" he asked. "Looking for trouble again, are you? What's this place got to do with anything?"

By the time I explained it, Ma Zaihai had already tied the other end of the Sam Browne belt to the belt around his waist. Then, having me hold tight to his gun, he began to climb down toward the underside of the antenna's bowl-like concrete base. The nearer he climbed to the bottom half of the bowl, the steeper it began to slope toward the wall. Footholds became increasingly few, until at last he could do no more than hang on with his arms as the lower half of his body dangled helplessly in midair. Fortunately Ma Zaihai was both strong and agile. There were only a few places where I had to steady the gun in my arms and help him swing across. Soon enough he'd disappeared from view. A few moments later, he yelled back. Then the sound of some object striking the antenna rang out. After several more such knocks, he called out to us to climb down after him. I pulled on the line. He seemed to have fixed the other end to something, so I wedged the gun into a section of the antenna and began climbing down the attached lengths of rifle strap and Sam Browne belt. Wang Sichuan followed closely behind.

After descending about thirty feet, I saw a damp hole in the rock, so water-washed it appeared covered in wax. I had no time to take a closer look, for just then, at the spot where the base of the round antenna met the wall of the dam, I noticed a square window, about three feet high and wide. Power cables ran down the concrete bowl and into this opening. It was around one of these cables that the Sam Browne belt was tied. Ma Zaihai was kneeling inside the small window. "Behind here is the telegraph room," he said.

"I thought the telegraph room was in the cavern Old Tang found," said Wang Sichuan.

"I saw the transmitter he brought back," said Ma Zaihai. "It was too small, definitely not the transmitter of a primary telegraph room. And no way would the main transmitter and the antenna have been placed so far apart. If they were attacked, the cables might be cut, so the primary telegraph room would be near the antenna. Underground bunkers are designed with the main transmitter in the primary telegraph room. All others are merely small-scale transmitters built into temporary command posts. If the dam were overrun, right here would be the hardest place to cut off from the antenna."

"You son of a gun, how come you didn't say this before?" asked Wang Sichuan.

"To tell you the truth, when Company Commander Tang said we should find the antenna, I figured what he really wanted was to find this primary telegraph room. He's much more experienced than I, so I didn't think it my place to say anything." Ma Zaihai scooted deeper into the tunnel, giving me space to climb in.

"We've already located a telegraph room," I said, "and verified that telegrams were sent from the transmitter there, so what's the point of finding this place?"

"While I can't guarantee it," he said, "ordinarily the main telegraph room is also the general headquarters. There's probably going to be something important back here."

By now I had already squeezed myself into the small window. Actually, the window wasn't as small as it looked, it's just that there were so many power cables. They stretched chaotically down the long and narrow space, taking up most of the room. Twisted together and each as thick as a wrist, they resembled the tentacles of some monstrous beast. From outside Wang Sichuan shouted for us to be careful not to get shocked.

After crawling about twenty feet, we reached the tunnel's end. The power cables ran through a hole cut into the wall, which had then been tightly resealed. "This is the external maintenance passage," said Ma Zaihai. "The internal maintenance passage is beyond. That they sealed off the tunnel suggests that something is wrong with the air outside."

"This isn't engineering class," I groaned. "Doesn't the wall just mean we're stuck out here?"

Ma Zaihai didn't reply. Grabbing his water canteen, he began striking it against the wall. A moment later a crack had opened up. "So that maintenance is convenient, this sort of separation wall is generally made of lime," he said. "It might look sturdy, but you could break it open with your fingernails. At most, there will be a layer of iron netting inside, but we can just cut through it." As he said this he struck the wall once more and a wide gap opened up. "No netting even," he said. "I guess there are not any mice in this fortification."

We spent the next ten-plus minutes making the hole big enough to fit through, then we continued on. Following the same pattern as before, we broke through two more isolation walls. Between them was an air-dispersal ventilation shaft, used to prevent the buildup of poisonous gas. It was just like the one we'd seen in the caisson and thus far too narrow for a person to enter. At last we reached the end of the cables. Each connected to an electrical box, emerging from the other end as thin wires that ran through the panels below us and down into the room underneath. Ma Zaihai pointed at one of the panels. Grabbing hold of the cables threading into it, he wedged his legs against the wall across from him and pulled with all his might until the panel burst open.

The space below was pitch-black. Sweeping my flashlight about, I saw we were in the ceiling of some room. Chairs surrounded several tables stacked with papers. Ma Zaihai jumped down and scanned the room with his flashlight but found nothing of note. Wang Sichuan and I jumped down as well and looked around. This room was different from any we had seen so far. The space was square and about the size of a basketball court. Equipment was arranged all around us. I saw a row of great iron boxes, each of them taller than a person and covered in a multicolored array of indicator lights and electrical switches. Huge and heavy, they'd been placed one after another along the room's four walls. Numerous rust spots had formed across their outer sheeting, but compared to the other machinery we'd seen, much of it so rusted as to be dropping whole flakes of the stuff, the damage here was minor. These iron boxes had clearly gone through some rust-prevention process. A great sheet of iron hung from one of the walls. Upon this were engraved lines of every color, forming a sectional map of the entire dam, albeit a simple one. Numerous indicator lights were fixed along the lines. The iron box that stood beneath it was covered with far more buttons than any of the others. It was some kind of console. Four long writing desks were lined up in the center of the room. Telephones and numerous piles of documents were neatly arranged atop them. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. The reason this room felt so different was all the precision instruments. Up till now we'd seen only huge machinery and crude concrete structures. We'd been in refrigerated storage, a warehouse, and an electrical canal. Here, at last, was a place fit for technical personnel.

"What's all this used for?" I asked Ma Zaihai. One by one he explained the purpose of each piece. Everything was in Japanese, so he couldn't be exactly sure what controlled what, but he knew their general uses. He said the large iron boxlike instruments must control the dam's equipment. There were mechanisms for inspecting and regulating the dam's pressure and water level, electrical circuits that operated the large sluice gates, and controls for all the generators. The sectional blueprint had to be a map of the pipelines running through the dam's interior. The lighted diodes indicated whether the pipelines were currently open or shut. This, he said, was definitely the dam's control room—or at the very least, one of the dam's control rooms.

We didn't see the transmitter we'd been anticipating, nor did we see any door that might lead to one. The room appeared to be sealed off. Shining his flashlight upward, Ma Zaihai observed the progression of the electrical wires. He tracked them along the ceiling, down the wall, and onto the floor. At last he pointed at four iron plates. They were locked with bolts thick as doorknobs. Undoing the locks, he pulled the iron plates open. A trapdoor. A ladder hung down into the darkness. There was another room below.

"A hidden trapdoor," said Ma Zaihai. "Even if this place was captured, it would still be a long time before this control room was found. Japanese military structures were all built this way."

At first glance there seemed nothing worrisome about the room below. Still I remembered with concern other times, other rooms. I steeled myself and was about to descend when Wang Sichuan grabbed hold of me.

"Wait a second," he said. "I just thought of something."

"What is it?" I asked.

He pointed at the dam's sectional map. "There are two extralarge indicator lights sticking up on both sides of the dam. Don't you think they represent the caissons?"

Ma Zaihai looked where he was pointing. The two lights were bigger than all the others, their colors different. He took a breath and nodded. "Yeah, I think they are."

"Then doesn't that mean their operational controls should be right here?"

I gave a start. I knew what he was thinking. Wang Sichuan walked over to the control box and shined his flashlight along the densely packed buttons. Beneath each button was a label, written in Japanese, but he wasn't trying to read the buttons. He leaned in closer, then beckoned me over. Dust had been rubbed from a few of the buttons. The machine had been used only recently.

"Interesting," said Wang Sichuan. "Perhaps there really is a Japanese soldier here."

Who'd started up those caissons after we entered and dropped us to the bottom of the dam? I didn't believe it was some "left behind" Japanese soldier. The whole way in, we hadn't seen a single sign of life. And this place was covered in dust. Clearly this room didn't see a lot of activity. I looked at the floor. There'd probably been footprints here, but now that we'd walked all around the room, they were no longer distinguishable.

"So then who was it?" Wang Sichuan asked. "The spy must have been here before us. Could it be the final woman from the first team, the one we haven't found yet?"

"For now we can only assume it was her," I said. "I really can't think of any other possibility."

"No," said Ma Zaihai, "it had to be someone who knew the layout of the dam. To get in here from the outside, we had to smash through the isolation walls. The only other way in would be through the trapdoor. It's pretty unlikely that someone here for their first time would just happen upon a place this concealed by luck. He or she had to already know the layout of the dam."

He was right. And after making it here, she realized immediately that the apparatus beneath the sectional map was the control box. She wiped the dust and read the labels until she found the switch controlling the caissons. She knew what she was looking for and so left the other machines untouched. "Regardless of who it is specifically," I said, "there's definitely something strange going on. Maybe it really is a Japanese spy. It was probably this person who murdered the young soldier in the warehouse. The ruination of the first team and their ultimate failure to complete the mission was also likely the work of this agent."

The two of them nodded.

"We don't know where this woman is," said Wang Sichuan, "but maybe she's still nearby. We might be about to run into her."

"Should we head back and grab the rifle so we can defend ourselves?" I asked.

"We still don't know for certain that we can get out through the lower room," said Ma Zaihai. "If we can't, then we'll have to come back the way we came. If we take down the gun, it'll be very difficult to climb out of here."

"Then we'd better be extra careful," said Wang Sichuan.

Ma Zaihai was the first down the ladder. After he reached the bottom and confirmed no one was there, the two of us climbed down. This room was nearly twice the size of the one above it. Six transmitters were arrayed along the wall nearest the dam's exterior. Stacks of telegrams were strewn messily atop them. Ironwork desks piled with dust-covered documents took up the rest of the space. This has to be the dam's command center, I thought. A huge blueprint of the underground base hung on one wall, identical to the one Old Tang had found but much larger. Wang Sichuan spied a microphone sitting atop one of the long tables against the wall. "This has to be where they read the emperor's letter of surrender before they withdrew," he said. He tried to convince Ma Zaihai to switch on the mike, but after he'd fussed with it for some time, the power light remained off. It appeared completely ruined.

I told them to stop walking around. I scanned the room with my flashlight. Sure enough, there were two sets of footprints heading in two directions: one to an ironwork double door, the other to a dark green wooden door. The ironwork doors were clearly blastproof, probably with some corridor beyond. What was behind the wooden one? A bathroom? We walked over and opened the green door. It was an office.

Dust filled the room. The furnishings and decor were very simple, though traces from where decorations had hung could be seen on the walls. Japanese swords, most likely. A dust-covered military uniform of some unknown rank hung in the corner. All over the room was evidence of dust disturbed. We followed a trail of handprints but found only a large stack of documents. We didn't speak Japanese, nor were we historians, so the papers were useless, but apparently somebody was very interested in something they thought was in this room, though they didn't seem to know exactly where it was.

We left the room and followed the other trail, toward the iron double doors. It was as I'd expected. After pushing them open, we were greeted by a long, pitch-black hallway. I shined my flashlight down it. Some footprints ran down the corridor, others into the room behind us. There had to be an exit ahead. We took off without a second thought, following the footprints into the darkness. Before long the corridor branched in three directions. The footprints ran down each one. Unable to determine which was the right path, we had no choice but to investigate them one by one. Our first selection ended in a power distribution room. Switches filled every inch of it.

"Why not try and flip a few?" said Wang Sichuan.

"Absolutely not," I said. "If they turn off some important mechanism, the compression engines in the icehouse for example, then the devil only knows what the consequences will be."

We returned to the fork and took the second corridor. We were soon standing before an iron door, triple-proofed, just like the others, and terribly thick. In a battle, every space in here would become a very-difficult-to-capture bunker. The big guy pushed the door open. Inside was a great hall. We swept our flashlight beams across the room.

I'm taking such pains to relate our search for the right path because it really was so critical. Later, while giving a summary of the incident, we felt some residual "fear after the fact." Had we not checked all the corridors, had we found the exit on the first try, then the true, hidden face of this sprawling underground bunker would have remained forever concealed. So often one's choice can change so much.

Past the door we saw a strange room. It looked so familiar, as if I'd seen it only recently. We walked inside. On the wall directly across from us hung a square curtain, fifteen feet in both length and width. Numerous low seats filled the room, and at its rear rested some strange apparatus. I walked straight over to the front of the machine. It was a miniature film projector. I hadn't known film projectors this small existed until I watched the Zero Film back on the surface. Could this be the underground base's movie theater? Was this where their superiors strengthened the soldiers' brainwashing and savagery? Looking back at it now, it was probably where the Japanese soldiers came to relax and have fun. In those days, though, our concept of the Japanese didn't allow for them taking part in recreational activities.

I was extremely curious about the little projector. Taking a closer look, I discovered it had been wiped clean of dust. Whoever was here before us must have been interested in it as well. I checked it all over. Sprouting from the back was a very familiar-looking shape. It was a circle with a spool in the middle, like you could hang something off it. This was uncanny. This feeling of familiarity was different from the sense of having seen this room before. It was a kind of anxiety, as if there were two electrically charged pieces in my mind about to touch and they were sending sparks back and forth. I needed to remember where I'd seen the thing. It was terribly crucial. I could feel it.

I called Wang Sichuan over and he motioned to Ma Zaihai. The three of us put our heads together. It came to Ma Zaihai at once. "The iron case! The shell-like iron case the female corpse was carrying. Maybe it attaches onto the projector."

No way, I thought. The iron case had looked like a snail shell. That case could be attached onto some component of the projector? Suddenly I realized what was wrong. The case wasn't a part of the projector. No, by God, but within that iron case was none other than a roll of film!