Search for the Buried Bomber

CHAPTER 8





The Dead Man



The deputy squad leader removed his clothing, jumped n, and the three of them dove to the bottom once more, the force of their exertions stirring up the surface. Wang Sichuan is an impetuous man. He stripped off his clothing and was about to jump in, too, when I pulled him back. Three people was enough.

All the movement underwater caused the wire netting to jerk our raft back and forth. I lay flat across the bottom and did my best to keep it from flipping. The deputy squad leader soon emerged, towing some blue-green object. The other two soldiers broke the surface after him. With a great tug followed by a spray of water, the three of them pulled the thing up from the depths, splashing it directly onto our raft.

We all leaped in surprise. At first glance it really did seem to be a dead person, but on closer inspection it became clear it was no such thing. It was a decomposing green-black gunnysack with holes torn all along its length by the netting and filled completely with rusted iron wire. Propped up, it did bear a remarkable resemblance to a rigid corpse. The gunnysack was disgusting. It covered our hands in watery rust. It was also extremely heavy. As soon as they set it down, the tail of the raft pulled up out of the water. Chen Luohu immediately shrank to the back of the raft. Any farther and he would have cowered right off the side. Luckily, Wang Sichuan stepped over and grabbed hold of him. The three corpsmen climbed, huffing and puffing, back onto the raft. The deputy squad leader stared for a moment at the gunnysack, his brows wrinkling. Then he turned to his two subordinates, rapped them once each atop the head, and cursed, "What the hell is this? A corpse? Is this what the corpses of your family members look like?"

The two soldiers hung their heads in embarrassment, then quickly jumped back in to finish cutting the wire. The deputy squad leader felt he'd lost a little face. "Those two new-recruit knuckleheads," he explained, "they're a pair of cowards." In fact, we'd all been given an awful fright. Seeing the thing thump down on the raft was terrifying. Thinking back on it, I'm pretty sure the corpsmen thought us a little soft and were trying to thicken our skins a bit.

Wang Sichuan shined his flashlight on the bag. "You think this thing was left behind by the Japanese?"

I was sure it was. This kind of gunnysack was called a buffer bag, I told the group, and was used as a provisional form of cover during explosions. I was sure it had once been filled with sand. The thing had probably been lost over the side at some point back when the Japanese were transporting equipment along the river. Indeed, it had begun to look as if the Japs really had set off a large explosion down here.

Wang Sichuan suddenly cut me off. He yanked on the rotting bag. "Wrong, Old Wu," he said. "This really is a corpse."

He tore open the soft, rotting bag, and we could see the remains of a human wrapped in the iron wire. The wire was wound around the bones and desiccated skin. The person had struggled violently before dying, tearing holes in the gunnysack's exterior. The corpse was already partially decayed, though the person had been so thin there wasn't much to decompose. Seeing his face distorted in suffering, we all shuddered involuntarily.

What I'm telling you is the truth, real as could be. I haven't exaggerated it at all. Indeed, once I saw that corpse laid out on the raft in the dark of the cave, my hair stood on end, and there was no way I would ever forget it. Not having witnessed it with your own eyes, it would be impossible to fully understand the gravity of such a sight: that the Japanese, in their frenzy, were capable of lining buffer bags with the bodies of still-living Chinese people, for use as protection against explosions. For a long time we stood in silence, Wang Sichuan the most obviously affected, his expression dark as night. When the two young soldiers finished cutting the wire and clambered back aboard the raft, they didn't know what to make of us—the looks on our faces must have been baffling. We pushed the corpse back into the water and continued downriver.

We didn't speak the rest of the way. To joke about anything seemed inappropriate. To divert our attention from what we'd seen, we watched the stone walls pass silently by. As the tunnel descended, the structure of the cave began to change, and our surroundings became increasingly bizarre. Features typical of a watery limestone cave began to replace those of a tectonic one, with waterfalls running down the rock walls and spouts seeping through the stone. We all put on our waterproof gear.

It was difficult to say if the limestone cave system had formed earlier than the tectonic features or the other way around. Tectonic caves are usually at least 100 million years old, while limestone cave systems can vary from 100,000 to 200 million years old. Perhaps 100 million years ago a mountain rose swiftly from the ocean and the geological activity stemming from this occurrence first resulted in a tectonic cave. Then, once an underground river had formed, it eroded the limestone around it, after which the characteristics of a limestone cave began to manifest. Generally speaking, the systems of large river caves that exist within karst terrain are netlike, with one layer on top of another and stringlike tunnels extending in all directions. With no prescribed rules or routes to follow, navigating such caves is not some sightseeing cruise where you just follow a river directly to its bottom.

Because of the water seeping through the walls, the surface layer of limestone was carried deeper into the cave, and the level of erosion should become increasingly severe as we proceeded downstream. Nonetheless, we estimated that once we reached a certain depth, our surroundings would become tectonic again. The pressure at that point would be too great for a karst-formed limestone cave to bear. We discussed each of these guesses, but what really captured our interest was, where did the river end? Was there an underground lake somewhere far downriver? It would be hard to imagine all of this water somehow dissipating through cracks in the rock and becoming groundwater.

Calculating approximately how much time we'd need to reach our destination, we accounted for the river's gentle slope, and estimated we were about sixteen kilometers from a thirty-six-hundredfoot depth. So long as nothing unforeseen occurred and we made camp that night on schedule, we figured we should arrive by ten the next morning. Of course, the prerequisite was the assumption that we had taken the correct branch in the river and that there were no more forks up ahead. Otherwise the map was blank, and the devil only knew where we would end up.

We soon found one of our guesses about the cave structure borne out perfectly: the erosion really was getting more severe. After we reached a depth of approximately 960 feet, the characteristics of a limestone cave burst into view. On both sides of the river the walls were transformed into a scrolling mural of complex and terrifying shapes. Falling all around were waterfalls with bases like plates of bone. Thin strands of rock interlaced crookedly like sharp teeth in a dog's mouth. Above the river there stretched a high stone bridge, seemingly suspended out of nowhere. From the roof of the cave, several waterfalls fell straight down, their force great enough that when we passed beneath them we had to curl into the raft for protection. Besides the Japanese, no one had seen this place for a million years. Now all of its secrets were being exposed to us. I felt as if we were drifting through the skeleton of some giant animal, and I didn't know whether to be frightened or excited.

Soon enough our theories encountered a serious challenge. After we'd passed beneath a giant waterfall, huge boulders appeared before us, blocking our path and encircled by rapids. We were sucked through the whitewater right into one of the rocks, our raft wedging itself into a crack.

"Fallen rocks," said Pei Qing, motioning with his flashlight. "They must have ripped from the ceiling during some cave-in."

"Anyone can see that," Wang Sichuan shouted. "Goddamn it, who's going to help me climb up and take a look?"

We climbed onto the rock to survey our predicament. We were shocked. A rocky shoal spread out before us, the river flowing on beneath the stones. The shoal was made of irregularly shaped rocks, the largest as big as the hood of a truck, the smallest the size of a fist, the ground extremely uneven. Black gunnysacks, just like the one we'd dredged from underwater, filled the gaps between the rocky chaos. The sight flooded our eyes. Many of the bags had almost rotted away and the twisted corpses within them jutted out in every horrid pose imaginable, still bound tightly in wire. We were looking into hell.