by Xu, Lei
Seeing the sinkhole up close, we hesitated. Geological prospectors always retain some thought of safety, and we knew that this type of cave would be dangerous to explore. The water level was also high, and the spray it kicked up as it rushed into the hole greatly reduced our field of vision.
What now? I asked Wang Sichuan. The situation inside the hole was anyone’s guess from out here, he said. He would descend first and check it out. The deputy squad leader immediately interjected that he should go instead, but Wang Sichuan stopped him. “That son of a bitch Pei Qing and I are different,” he said. “I’m a geological prospector, and climbing into caves is my specialty. It’s up to me to explore it first. Don’t argue about this.”
At this my temper flared. “Don’t pull this hero shit now,” I said to Wang Sichuan. “That note was stuffed into my pocket. It’s up to me to handle it.”
I’ve always found these kinds of arguments infuriating, but this was how everyone acted in all of the revolutionary movies, and that’s where we learned how to behave. What could you do? In the end, it was decided that I would be the first to descend. Wang Sichuan was too big. Even with three corpsmen holding the rope, we were afraid they still wouldn’t be able to pull him up.
We had originally been carrying equipment for this sort of thing, but we’d dropped it while fleeing the rising water. Luckily the people who’d been here before us left their belongings behind. We put all the gear in order, and I strapped on a headlamp. This was my least favorite piece of equipment. Wearing it makes one’s forehead burning hot, and this affects my thinking. Looking into the deep cave, I felt a twinge of regret. Being the trailblazer has never been my forte. But there was nothing to do now except grit my teeth and take the plunge.
I hooked myself in and climbed over the iron railing. Stepping onto the tangle of power cables, I slid into the cave. With the torrent of water splashing all around me, I could see nothing but the thick black cables. The cave wall behind them was completely obscured. The uppermost portion of the sinkhole was narrow and cramped with power cables. After descending a short distance, I began to hear a creaking sound. Scanning below with my headlamp, I could just make out a dark form somewhere far below my feet. It appeared to be a platform with some kind of machine. The men up above continued to lower me down. I turned my head to escape the water’s spray, but I was soon drenched and freezing. After another twenty or so feet, my headlamp illuminated an iron sign, rusted to ruin, hung amid the power cables: Station-0384-Line 8. More Japanese was written on the back, but I couldn’t understand what it said. The sound of rushing water filled my ears. I finally descended deep enough to get a clear look at the machine. You could see the traces of where the engineering corpsmen had peeled the calcium carbonate from its exterior. The generator had been erected on a platform of iron bars laid across the hole like a protective filter. Looking through the gaps I could see the utter blackness below. Another iron sign had been placed on the platform: “No Entry.”
Little by little I continued to descend, until at last I dropped onto the platform. It immediately let out a fearful groan and began to buckle. I stepped onto the “No Entry” sign. The sign was so rusted, it split apart and tumbled through the cracks. The nerves on my back tingled. I took another step. Again the platform groaned, but this time the sound clearly suggested it would hold, so I dropped my whole weight onto it.
The generator was water powered and hidden beneath a layer of calcium carbonate. Even the propeller blades were covered in the stuff, but they still managed to slowly turn as water rushed past them. Knowing little about such things, I decided not to investigate it any further. Instead I took a quick, exploratory lap around the platform. Behind the machine, I found a space on the floor where one of the iron bars had split off, leaving a gap big enough for a person to descend through. I squatted down and shined my flashlight into the breach. Sure enough, thirty feet down the cave was no longer vertical. Here it sloped into a kind of staircase that ran deep into the earth. Perfect, I thought. From here on the way will be easier. Even if I fall, I probably won’t get seriously injured. So I pulled on the rope—telling them to let more of it out—squatted next to the opening, and took a careful look down. Kneeling this close to the platform, I began to detect a thick, foul chemical odor. Covering my nose, I leaned in close and looked down. A layer of iron netting had been wound underneath the platform and a hole torn through it. Something had clearly passed through here, but this “something” was a good bit smaller than Wang Sichuan.
I yelled up to the top several times, asking them to toss me down some pliers. A moment later a pair slid down the rope. Grabbing them, I extended my arm into the opening, felt around a bit, and began cutting through the netting. At this angle the work was strenuous. After a few minutes, my back started to cramp. I continued to cut, tearing off pieces of the netting as I worked. At last the job seemed more or less complete, so I bent over and wriggled my upper half through the gap, scanning about with my headlamp to see what was waiting for me underneath. The iron mesh beneath the platform was very dense, like close vegetation. I turned my head to illuminate the darkness. Then I saw it. There, tangled deep in the wiring, was a thick clump of hair.
CHAPTER 26
The Clump of Hair
Just beneath the hair, I saw a dark, curled-up shadow, but it was sunk too deep in the mesh for me to make it out.
As I brought my head closer to the object, the stink grew even stronger. In my heart I already knew what it was. I brought the pliers through the gap and, gripping the clump of hair, gently pulled it away, revealing a sickeningly pale face, swollen with water. Just as I’d thought. Even though I knew what I was going to find the moment I saw the hair, it was still a shock when my suspicions were confirmed. At once I pulled my head out and began to yell toward the surface. At last, someone else rappelled down—one of the corpsmen. He descended until he was hanging just above the platform. “What is it?” he asked. I gestured for him to quiet down. Having someone else down here filled me with newfound courage. Covering my nose to block the awful smell, I leaned back in for another look.
The corpse was entirely wound in the iron netting, his uniform identical to our own. He must have belonged to the same unit as Yuan Xile. The corpsmen had just searched this goddamn area, yet none of them had discovered the dead body. Did this mean that rather than continuing deeper into the cave, Yuan Xile and her team had stopped here and descended into the sinkhole, just as we were doing?
I felt a chill in the air and drew back out of the gap. After telling the young soldier that there was a dead body beneath the platform, I yanked on the rope, signaling to the others to lift us up. Back on top everyone was stunned. This is a clue as well, said Wang Sichuan. He asked me if I’d recognized who it was. I shook my head, but seeing as he’d died here, the sinkhole probably didn’t lead anywhere good. We’d better lift the corpse out and take a look first, I said. Then we could figure out our next move.
We spent the next three hours taking turns cutting away the iron mesh that bound the body. By the time we’d raised it up, all of us stunk of death from head to toe. The man’s hair was very long and covered his face. The face, although slightly swollen with water, remained well defined. He had very dark skin and looked to be about forty—he was probably the team elder. Wang Sichuan had been looking closely at the corpse. Once we washed its face clean, his expression abruptly changed.
“My God,” he stammered, “I know this guy. How did he end up here?” When he said the name, our faces all turned white. We stared at the corpse, none of us daring to believe it was true.
Forgive me for not revealing his name here. Within the world of geological prospecting, he was a famous expert, really more of a geologist than a prospector. In the history books, it states that he defected to the Soviet Union, but in reality he died a martyr’s death, here in the depths of the cave. Given the man’s identity, it became apparent that the quality of the first team was superior to anything we’d imagined. Had th
eir standards been any higher, the only people left to include would have been legends and icons like Li Siguang and Huang Jiqing. We were stunned. If these were the people Old Cat was rescuing, it was a grand mission indeed.
Wang Sichuan searched the corpse’s pockets, but they were all empty. Next we inspected the body, hoping to learn how he’d died. He appeared to lack any external injuries, but his extremities—especially the fingers and toes—had taken on a greenish hue. Stranger than that, the gums in his wide-open mouth had all turned black and his entire body twitched. He was in a severe state of rigor mortis.
“Seems like he was poisoned,” I said, basing my judgment on folk knowledge.
Several people nodded their heads. What about poison gas, said Wang Sichuan. He suggested the Japanese had hoarded chemical weapons down below and they had begun to leak. It was hard to deny this possibility. In fact, after considering it a moment, the correctness of it struck me like a revelation. Yes, I thought, that’s exactly what happened. What if this cave was actually one of the sites where the Japanese stored their chemical weapons? To hide the fact they’d used them during the war, they’d buried those it was too late to destroy down this sinkhole. As for the plane, maybe it had only been transported here by chance. At the time of the Japanese surrender, war criminals were said to have revealed that nearly 2 million chemical warheads were secretly hidden around China. To this day the Japanese have divulged neither the locations of these bombs nor their total amount. It’s rumored the majority are scattered across what was once Manchuria.
After Japanese prospectors discovered and reported the underground river, their superiors must have realized that, although they’d located no mineral resources, this spot was suitable for storing chemical weapons. They then constructed a weapons storehouse within the cave. As this area was within the defensive zone maintained by the Japanese military against the Soviet Union, there were clearly strategic reasons for storing chemical weapons here as well. On the face of it, this explanation seemed entirely rational.
Then, as quickly as the thought occurred to me, I realized how unlikely it was. Why would the Japanese have bothered to haul their weapons so deep into the forest? Concealing them like this didn’t seem worth the effort. How much time would it take to transport chemical weapons to such a remote place? Moreover, using an underground river as a storehouse was patently unsafe. No matter what, a dry cave would have been found for such an operation. The deputy squad leader agreed this probably wasn’t the case. According to him, the netting beneath the platform was a measure to prevent workers from escaping. He pointed out that the “No Entry” sign suggested that an as yet unexplored area lay below. If it were gas bombs down there, the sign would have said something different.
Everyone let fly with a hundred different opinions at once. There was another problem as well, Wang Sichuan pointed out. How had this person managed to die on the underside of the platform? He couldn’t have been swept down there by the water. He would have landed atop the iron platform, not under it. There was only one possibility: In his final moments, he’d attempted to head back the way he’d come, but the strength of the poison had blurred his senses. He’d tangled himself up past any point of extrication, and there, at last, he died.
It now seemed as if not only had the earlier team descended into the sinkhole, but something terrible had happened to them down there. Had the person who slipped me the note already known about this?
After we’d covered the corpse with a sleeping bag, Wang Sichuan said we had no choice but to go down there and investigate. We were on to something, he said. And if these were the people that Old Cat was here to rescue, then he had already gone the wrong way. Having been given a clue, we couldn’t just ignore it. We placed country above all else in those years, and, given that people’s lives were at stake, none of us felt the slightest hesitation about completing the job in Old Cat’s stead.
“There’s probably poison gas down there,” said Wang Sichuan. “We have to be extremely careful. Since we don’t have any gas or protective masks, we’d better prepare some wet towels.”
In the end, we all tore off pieces of cloth to use as masks. Thinking back on it now, it sounds so naive, believing that these would actually protect us, but back then, that’s what they’d taught us in Attack Preparation class: hide under your desks if there’s nuclear war, and a wet towel is a replacement for gas masks. Anyway, we geological prospectors weren’t used to using gas masks. Any caverns that produce poison gas are also generally combustible. What use would a mask be? You’d be blown to smithereens long before the gas had time to get to you.
We passed one by one through the breach in the iron platform. The deputy squad leader led the way down to the staircase-shaped slope that lay below. We continued down for a very long way. The sides of the cave had been washed so slick that the moment you stopped paying attention you’d fall. Making our way with great care, we soon arrived at a narrow tunnel with eroded limestone walls. Running water covered the floor. Although this tributary was still expanding, it was still too small to be called anything but a subterranean brook. The water rose no higher than our ankles, and the space was so narrow we had to stoop to proceed.
As expected, there were few signs of Japanese presence down here. After we’d been walking for some ten minutes, covering our noses with cloth all the while, one of the young soldiers suddenly paused and said something was wrong. We all stopped and looked at him. What is it? we asked. He didn’t respond, but used his flashlight to illuminate his boots. Then, somewhat anxiously, he rolled up the bottom of his pants. His legs were covered in a black, uneven mass of soft, writhing flesh. We looked closer: leeches, and already filled to bursting with his blood.
CHAPTER 27
Leeches
My mind buzzed as I shined my flashlight around the water. At first I could see nothing, but when I squatted closer, my hair stood on end. The water was all leeches, their color similar to the cave bottom. They crowded around our feet. Inch by inch, they crawled over to us, hoping to burrow into the cracks in our boots. Goose bumps rose all over my body. Without second thought we began frantically pulling them off of us, Wang Sichuan using so much force that he flung one directly onto my neck. I cursed violently and told him to get it off me. The deputy squad leader then raised his pant legs. We gasped. Black leeches bulging with blood covered every inch of his legs. We checked our own. They were no different. “How the hell are there so many of them here?” asked Wang Sichuan.
“It’s the water temperature,” said one of the young soldiers. “It’s much warmer than the main river.”
Leeches may be disgusting, but they’re not fatal. Still, watching them squirm all around us made me deeply uncomfortable, for after latching on to you, they become very difficult to remove. While in the South, I once heard that leeches will sometimes burrow into a man’s reproductive organ without him feeling it. This scared the hell out of me. I immediately began to brush off the area around my groin. Wang Sichuan asked me what I was doing. When I told him the story, his face turned pale with fear. “Should I not just take it out and wipe it off?” heasked.
“Try to be a little more civilized,” I said, but then the deputy squad leader announced that we had to keep going. There were too many leeches for us to wait here any longer.
We ran like the wind, none of us paying any attention to what was beneath the water. Then, after sprinting about a hundred feet—whoosh—the deputy squad leader suddenly disappeared from out in front. Neither Wang Sichuan nor I had time to react, and in a moment there was nothing but air beneath our feet as well. I cried out, but it was too late. The cave had suddenly sloped downward, right out from under our feet.
Everything went dark. We tumbled together down the slope, somersaulting over and over each other until we were wrapped together. Within seconds my knees, head, butt, and every other body part had been smashed so many times I wanted to vomit. My flashlight was knocked loose. With his great strength, Wang Sichuan tried de
sperately to grab hold of something to stop our descent, but the drop was far too sheer. A chaos of light pulsed before my eyes. For an instant my body ceased its tumbling, but I had no time to realize the change before air was once more beneath me. The rock was gone, and I was in free fall.
It’s over, I thought to myself. Am I really about to die? Is there some jagged cliff below me? Before I could finish imagining this miserable plight, there was a loud boom and my body went cold—the shock went through me as soon as my butt hit the surface, then all at once I felt the force of it—I had plunged deep into a pool of water. The current picked me up in a flash and washed me onward. Wang Sichuan was still holding me in a firm bear hug and wouldn’t let go. I gathered my strength and kicked him off, then swam for the surface. With effort, I finally made it to the top. It was pitch-black, and the water seemed to be continuously spinning me around. From the speed I was moving and the sounds that filled my ears, I could tell I’d fallen into the raging rapids of some second underground river. Judging by the roar of the water and the speed of the river—each of them far in excess of the channel we had initially traveled down—this seemed to be the true underground river!
I struggled against the waves and cried out, but my voice was lost amid the crash of the water. Caught up in the current, I was rolled end over end and rushed who knows how far to some dark and distant corner of the cave. There was nothing fun at all about this experience. To be honest, I don’t have any direct memory of what occurred, for I could see nothing and heard only the roar around me. Whatever image I have of the place originates almost entirely from my imagination. I remember only utter panic at the thought of being sucked deep underwater. I was washed along in total darkness, knowing neither when nor where my life would finally come to an end.