Xu Lei - Search for the Buried Bomber

This book is dedicated to the older generation of prospectors, who toiled mightily and endured great hardships in the vast mountains of the motherland.

The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Ihad to think this story through for a long time before writing it. So much of what happened remains a mystery, even to me. Other parts were simply absurd. They failed to conform even to our most fundamental ideas of the world at that time. Perhaps such things should not be passed on, I thought, but rather left buried and forgotten for all eternity.

Still, I have decided to record my story. To not do so, I realized, would be a terrible pity and a great disservice, not only to those who lived through the events with me, but also to the very history of our nation itself.

I am a retired geological prospector formerly attached to the Geological Prospecting Unit of the People’s Liberation Army. In the red madness of those years, we were blessed to escape the storm of the Cultural Revolution. Instead, it was our fate to wander the great mountains and rivers of China in search of untold riches hidden deep beneath the earth’s surface. For two decades we journeyed across China’s no-man’s-land, alternately facing extreme suffering and numbing boredom. And then the things we encountered…the nameless terrors, things far beyond the scope of the imagination. Such things were never supposed to be real. Not one word about them will ever be seen in the official records. Any trace of their existence has been sealed away forever. Some of what follows comes from my personal experiences, and some of it was told to me by my older comrades. We swore to never reveal what we saw to the wider world. I will not break that oath. So remember, what follows is merely fiction and nothing more.

Iwas a prospector for twenty years. It was dangerous work, but more perilous than any raging rapid was the indescribable boredom. During one long stretch in my early years, I looked out upon the endless wilderness that surrounded us and felt a suffocating tightness descend upon me. To know that one must remain in such a place for many more years…only one who has experienced it could understand that sort of torment. But that feeling vanished completely after what happened in 1962. I learned then that hidden deep within those dreary mountains were terrifying mysteries. I finally understood that the fearful stories the older prospectors told about the mountains were more than just idle talk.

Most older prospectors will have already heard of the 1962 incident. As for you younger readers, if your mother or father was a prospector, ask them. Back then there was a well-known prospecting initiative called the Inner Mongolia 723 Project—“23” being the assigned number for coal-focused prospecting work in the mountains of Inner Mongolia that year. Three large groups of prospectors entered the primeval Inner Mongolian forests in quick succession, prospecting the area in small blocks. Then, only two months after it began, the 723 Project suddenly ended. The project headquarters began quickly pulling technical personnel from other prospecting teams. These specialists were subjected to rounds of thorough questioning, made to fill out endless forms, and had their personal records carefully scrutinized. Not one of them was ever told where the information was being sent.

At last, a large group of prospecting specialists was selected to join the new 723 Project. The 1962 incident was causing a great deal of excitement. Rumors flew back and forth about the incredible thing the 723 Project was said to have discovered. But despite all the stories, no one really knew for sure what had been dug up. For those not directly involved, this is generally where the story ends. The Cultural Revolution began, and in those dark times no one paid any more attention to the mystery of the 723 Project. After being escorted by military trucks into the mountains, those specialists were quickly forgotten.

I was among the forgotten. There were twenty-four of us—selected and, by military order, put on trains to either Jiamusi or Qiqihar. There we were packed into military vehicles, which rocked and bounced down the long road from Heilongjiang to Inner Mongolia. We began our journey on paved roads and highways, but the farther we drove, the more hazardous the terrain became. By the last few days, we were driving along steeply winding mountain passes far from any sort of civilization. I didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on, but listening to my fellow passengers, I could tell that whatever had taken place within those mountains was far from ordinary.

At the time, we all guessed it had to be something industry related. Most of us thought it was a large oil field. Some of the older guys who’d been part of the huge Daqing oil-field exploration spoke vividly of its discovery. It had been a similar situation, they said: After Daqing was first located, a select group of experts from all across China was transferred to the area. It was only after several months of discussion and verification that the oil field’s existence was confirmed. We couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride upon hearing this. After all, we’d been chosen.

When we arrived at the lower base, we suddenly realized things weren’t so simple. The first thing we saw was an unbroken line of army tents, large and small, stretched out along the basin, like a chain of grave mounds running infinitely into the horizon. It looked nothing like the base of an engineering brigade, but rather like the field station of an army preparing for battle. We stared dumbfounded at the bustling camp and all the engineering corpsmen running back and forth. For a moment we thought our leaders had simply gone mad and were preparing to attack the Soviet Union. We soon discovered, though, they weren’t all troop tents. Most were filled with supplies. A few veterans went off to take a peek and came back raving that the tents were bursting with Soviet equipment.

In those days, our prospecting equipment was terribly out-ofdate, and our methods had changed little since the time of liberation. Our country had only a small amount of so-called modern equipment, most of it bought from the Soviet Union at extremely high prices. As on-the-ground specialists, we’d never had the opportunity to see gear like this. The problem was, this Soviet equipment was used only for deep excavation—at a range of three thousand to forty-five hundred feet underground. Until then no one in China had mined to a depth of more than about fifteen hundred feet. Our country simply lacked the strength and ability to exploit those deep deposits. Even if we had wanted to, it would still have taken five to seven years to set up the proper infrastructure before the mine would be operational. China needed resources to grow, but as the saying goes, distant water cannot quench present thirst. It was the government’s policy to keep the discovery of deep deposits a secret, saving them for the next generation to use, rather than fruitlessly attempting to extract them. So to find this seemingly useless equipment here was puzzling. Our hearts were troubled by a strange unease.