In the warm tent behind the boulder, Zoya was combing Beria's hair and asked Wei Ran with a frown on her face who was sitting at the door of the tent.
Without waiting for Wei Ran to speak, Saveri said, "How about I use a snowmobile to send those grenades to the other side of the mountain? There is a swamp there in the summer, and there will be no danger of sinking into the swamp."
.”
"No need to take such risks"
Wei Ran, who was scratching the crowbar with his axe, finally said, "Don't touch those grenades yet, and they are important physical evidence."
"Physical evidence? What physical evidence?" Zoya asked in confusion.
"Physical evidence of railroad sabotage"
Wei Ran shook the crowbar in his hand and asked Saveli, "Have you ever used grenades when you were serving in the army?"
"No." Saveli shook his head, "I have only operated ship-based torpedoes, installed fuzes, released safety, etc."
"The truth should be similar."
Wei Ran explained with a smile while guessing the military branch of the other party's previous service, "A grenade with an instantaneous detonation fuse will explode in one second after the fuse is pulled. This kind of grenade is basically used as a booby trap. Let's see.
look at this."
As he spoke, he shook the crowbar in his hand again, "At that time, what the Germans most wanted to destroy was the port of Murmansk, followed by the railway connecting Murmansk and Moscow.
Looking at the things we found, including crowbars, hand drills and instant grenades, we can basically confirm that the Germans you found were here to sabotage the railway."
"So it can be sold at a good price?" Zoya asked in surprise.
Wei Ran put the crowbar on the wood stove and while baking the remaining ice ballast, he explained, "There is still one last question left."
"What's the problem?" Saveli asked.
"The simplest question" Wei Ran smiled, "Who killed this German? And who buried him and those explosives here."
"Where can I find this?" Zoya muttered blankly, "It's been so long."
"it's actually really easy"
Wei Ran took out his phone and looked at it, "You two have to do me a favor later."
"What's the business?" Saveli asked.
"After you have rested, you two will go back on a snowmobile."
Wei Ran waved his hand to let himself finish, "Saveli, you are a local. You need to go to your village or a nearby village and ask an older person whether there was any local group to protect the railway line during World War II.
If there is an organization like guerrillas, you can ask if there are any living people or their descendants, or if there are any stories that have been passed down.
In addition, you also need to help me get a vise, a vise with a locking function and a bottle of WD40. And of course, there is also a rope, the longer the better."
"You want to dismantle the fuses of those grenades?" Saveli immediately guessed Weiyan's plan.
"It's safe to dismantle it. Even if it explodes, we won't encounter any danger." Weiran assured confidently, "Those grenades are well preserved. As long as the method is proper, there is no big problem in their safe dismantling."
"I will get what you want, but you have to promise not to try to dismantle those grenades alone before I come back. My friend, I don't want anything to happen to you here." Saveli said seriously.
"Don't worry, I will definitely wait for you to come back."
Wei Ran made a serious promise, and then continued, "Zoya, there is no mobile phone signal here, so when you go back, you have to call Professor Alexei for me.
Let him check the files left by the Germans and Finns while he is still drunk today, files on Brandenburg's actions there."
Saveli waited for Wei Ran to finish speaking and immediately asked, "Are you planning to stay on your own?"
"Beria is also here, and I have participated in the Polar Survival Challenge. My experience in wild camping is no worse than yours."
Wei Ran said, pointing to the dog lying beside him, and said matter-of-factly, "I want to stay and guard those grenades to prevent overly curious hunters from coming over and encountering any danger. This kind of work cannot be left to Zoya."
Right?"
Hearing this, Saveli and Zoya looked at each other. After hesitating for a moment, they pulled his backpack over. After rummaging through it for a while, they took out three plastic-wrapped marine flares and handed them to Wei Ran, "Take this."
This, if you encounter danger, call it out, we might be able to see it in the village."
"We will disassemble the car radio from the snowmobile later and send it to you." Zoya added, "The terrain here is high enough, maybe we can communicate."
"Then I'll bother you." Wei Ran readily agreed to the other party's kindness.
Now that they had made a decision, the young couple did not hesitate. They picked up the semi-automatic rifle wrapped in a cloth strip and walked towards the foot of the mountain with a flashlight.
Wei Ranzhi naturally had his reasons and ideas for leaving the young couple. The most important of these was naturally to see if there were any more discoveries under that tree.
Waiting patiently for the Savellis to use a plastic sleigh to bring up the snowmobile battery and car radio, and then letting them help set up the radio. Wei Ran, who watched them leave again, patted the dog's head.
He tied its leash to a small tree not far from the tent.
After waiting for a moment, he carefully carried the metal box filled with grenades behind a big tree in the distance.
After eliminating the danger, Wei Ran went back under the hand drill, picked up the metal detector that Saveli had thrown away before, and reached back into the frozen mud pit.
Sure enough, the rapid beeping confirmed his guess that there really was something else inside.
Throwing the metal detector aside, Wei Ran walked back to the tent and brought a bucket of hot water that had been boiled in advance and poured it in. Then he brought a smaller bucket of boiled hot stones and poured them in.
Amidst the thick steam, the mud pit was completely boiling, but Wei Ran had already run away, hiding behind a rock and sitting down. He leisurely took out his cigarette case and lit one for himself.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Before he finished smoking the cigarette, the water vapor was no longer steaming in the mud pit. Seeing this, he put away the cigarette holder and trotted over to clean it with an engineer shovel.
Warm mud soup.
Without any effort at all, he dug out a leather case with a roughly complete outline, but with holes everywhere. The leather case was not big, and it only contained a few drill bits of different thicknesses.
Unwilling to give up, he continued to dig through the smelly mud boiled by hot water. He then discovered a Mauser bayonet still in the scabbard and a Mauser with a roughly complete outline and a scope.
Rifle and corresponding bullet pouch.
When he picked out all the scraps of copper, iron, and leather, Wei Ran discovered that there was an iron box in the mud pit.
After a moment's hesitation, he carefully pulled the iron box out, and then slowly opened the lid.
What he didn't expect was that this almost identical metal box did not contain grenades, but instead contained blocks of TNT explosives that were placed next to each other and were almost stuck together!
Carefully, he took out all the detonators from the metal partition on the right, put them into a rubber glove, and hung them on the hand drill. Then he picked up the safe metal box and carried it to another place far away.
Hidden under a big tree.
Returning to the edge of the mud pit again, Wei Yan tried it again with the metal detector. What he didn't expect was that there was something inside.
He had no choice but to melt another bucket of snow, boil it, pour it into the pit, and then throw in the stones heated on the wood stove.
After so much work, when he finally took out the last metal object from the pit, it was just an aluminum kettle vaguely wrapped in a leather case.
This kettle is larger than the kettles equipped by the Soviet Union during World War II. There is a Russian mark on the mouth of the kettle that reads "Metal Lamps State-Owned Nonferrous Metals" and the words "29-30" surrounded by a circle of Russian words in the middle.
Just looking at the spout without a screw and the clear mark on it, you can tell that this kettle is an old item before World War II. As it says on it, it was produced between 1929 and 1930. As for that
The torn leather case with felt lining is undoubtedly handmade and not issued by the standard.
Finally, he used a metal detector to scan the pit to make sure there was nothing else. Then he carried the findings back to the tent door with a bucket, took off the long-sleeved rubber gloves commonly used in the kitchen, and put on them.
I got a pair of medical rubber gloves and sat by the stove to start cleaning up the things I found.
Among these items, the ones in the best condition are naturally the set of large and small drill bits and the Mauser bayonet. Unfortunately, there is no valuable information on them at all.
The stock of the Mauser rifle was completely rotten, and only the metal part still maintained its intact outline.
It was the leather bullet bag that looked the most miserable, but he found that it was filled with bullets for Mauser rifles.
This small detail undoubtedly proves that the people who buried these things in the first place probably did not lack weapons at all, at least one with a scope.
Or rather, it was inconvenient for the other party to take away so many things, but he was unwilling to throw away these trophies, so he buried them under the tree together with the broken kettle he had discarded.
The reason why it is called a broken kettle is because there is a round bullet hole in the middle of the kettle.
This also indirectly implies that the person who buried these things is most likely a Soviet, or even a veteran who had joined the army before the start of World War II. Otherwise, how did this pre-war kettle come about?
In the midst of my thoughts, I soaked the coat of this seemingly inconspicuous kettle with melted warm snow water and took it off, and then rinsed the kettle body inside and out.
Finally, on the lower edge of one side of the kettle, he found a line of the Russian name "Igor Augustevich Petrov" that was hand-carved and neatly about the thickness and length of a cigarette.
“It’s much easier if you have a name.”
Wei Ran muttered secretly, then turned around and walked into the tent, picked up the phone and started calling Saveli.
Fortunately, because the terrain here is high enough, the distance between the two is really not that far, so although there was some noise in the channel, the other party always responded immediately.
Wei Ran repeated the name he had just found on the kettle three times in a row and asked the other party to ask for help. After Wei Ran received the other party's assurance, he did not elaborate on his discovery on the radio channel. Similarly, Saveli also
He was cautious and didn't ask any more questions in the channel, which saved him a lot of trouble.
In less than two hours, when Weiran cooked a large pot of Chinese version of potato stew with the ingredients brought by Saveli and his wife and the seasonings stored in the food box, Saveli also dragged it alone
He hurried back with a plastic sled bucket. In the bucket, there were also a lot of vises and locking vises needed for sanitation.
"Victor, what are you making delicious?"
Saveli asked from a distance, "I could smell the fragrance coming from a long distance away."
"You're here just in time, come in and have something to eat together first."
Wei Ran greeted enthusiastically, "Did you ask anything?"
"Nothing gained,"
As Saveli spoke, he dragged the bucket filled with various things to the door of the tent, and at the same time explained, "There are indeed a few people named Petrov in our village, but I asked them one by one, and they all
I've never heard of the name you mentioned.
No one in the village knew anything about the guerrillas. In fact, my father told me on the phone that our village was only established in the late 1960s, and my father followed my grandparents at that time.
, came with the logging team from the countryside of Petersburg.
The rest of the people in the village are similar, they either came here with the logging teams, or they migrated here to follow the fish canneries or mines."
This chapter is not over, please click on the next page to continue reading! "So there are almost no locals in your village?" Wei Ran asked while bringing the stewed beef to the table.
"There are no locals. There are probably a lot of local brown bears. But my father, Uncle Pasha, and Mr. Alexey will come over tomorrow. Then my father will help us go to our friends in the town to ask about that town.
It is said that it existed during the time of Tsarist Russia.”
Saveli finished speaking and pointed to the vise in the bucket, "Where is this placed?"
"No hurry, come here to eat something to warm yourself up."
Wei Ran greeted again, he was not disappointed with the result. If it were so easy to find the real owner, I'm afraid it wouldn't be their turn to bother coming here.
Upon hearing this, Saveli immediately got into the tent, took off his coat and gloves, and took out a bottle of high-end vodka from the pocket of his coat.
"Don't drink wine."
Wei Ran stopped the other party this time and said, "Let's have some tea. Let's dismantle all the fuses on those grenades later."
Taking a sip from the cup Wei Ran handed him, Saveli smacked his lips and asked, "What kind of tea is this? Why does it taste so weird?"
"Hawthorn leaf tea" Wei Ran sat on the edge of the folding table holding his cup.
"It should taste better if you add some sugar."
As Saveli said, he found a sugar box with a familiarity, grabbed two sugar packets from it, tore them open and poured them into the cup. At the same time, he asked curiously, "Victor, the historian still has
Do you want to know how to defuse bombs?”
"You can't expect the police to come and help, right?"
Wei Ran asked of course, "When there is a big discovery like this, no one wants the police to appear within a hundred meters."
"That makes sense. I thought historians buried themselves in archives."
After saying that, Saveli took a sip of the tea with sugar, and then he took the wooden spoon from Wei Ran's hand without any courtesy, and served himself a large plate of steaming beef stew, and then grabbed a roasted charred beef stew.
The fragrant riba was torn open and thrown into the thick soup.
While introducing the things they had just dug out while Saveri was away, the two of them also ate to their stomachs and drank up the hawthorn leaf tea in the coffee pot.
After resting enough, Wei Ran asked the other party to use the plastic bucket to drag the oversized vise, which weighed at least thirty or forty kilograms, to the edge of a big tree and secure it with a few large nails.
Firmly fixed on the tree trunk.
"Are you really sure?" Saveli asked for the last time.
"Do not worry"
As Wei Ran spoke, he had already carefully picked up an M39 grenade, first carefully stuck its body in a vise, and then used the vise to pinch the dish nut of the fuze and lock it.
Finally, he tied the more than 30-meter-long climbing rope to the handle of the vise. Wei Ran picked up the bottle of WD40 and sprayed it around the thread where the fuze and the projectile were screwed together. Then he immediately called to Save.
Together they hid behind a boulder and waited patiently.
After about three to five minutes, Wei Ran slowly pulled the rope and used the leverage provided by the vise to loosen the fuse without any effort at all.
After completing the most dangerous part, the next steps were much easier. Wei Ran used the cover of the big tree where the vise was fixed to go around, used a wooden stick prepared in advance to gently move the vise, and easily removed the dangerous weapon.
The fuse was unscrewed.
The first grenade was so easily dismantled that Saveli, who was sweating from a distance, breathed a sigh of relief.
Next, the two of them cooperated with each other and dismantled the fuses of the remaining 29 grenades one by one without any danger, and then threw all the missile bodies that no longer threatened into an iron bucket.
After removing the greatest danger from the scene, Saveli immediately opened the bottle of wine he brought and poured out two glasses. He celebrated a little with Wei Ran, and then picked up his metal detector again.
He continued to search for any possible discoveries in the pile of rocks.
Compared to Saveli's blind enthusiasm, Wei Ran was much lazier. At this time, he was nesting in the tent, pulling Beria's huge dog's head while looking at the kettle that he had washed clean.
The only clue on the kettle is naturally the round bullet hole. However, there is only one bullet hole. In other words, the bullet that was shot into the kettle did not penetrate the kettle, nor was it damaged due to the high pressure of the bullet impact.
The kettle itself burst, and there was no sign of even bulging in the kettle itself.
Looking at Saveli who was holding a metal detector in the distance, Wei Ran picked up the bullet belt he had dug out before, pulled out a magazine from it, took out a Mauser rifle bullet, and pressed the bullet against the kettle.
Tried the bullet holes in it.
Sure enough, it wasn't a rifle bullet...
Wei Ran casually threw the bullet into the iron bucket. The bullet was too big for the bullet hole and could not squeeze through.
After thinking for a while, he simply took out the newly obtained PPK pistol from the metal book, pulled the slide and pulled out a bullet to try. This time, the bullet head of the bullet could be inserted with some reluctance.
So it was shot with a pistol?
Wei Ran put the bullet back into the magazine of the pistol and put it back into the metal book. Then he pulled the dog's head and closed his eyes, and began to recall the scars on the knee of the corpse.
He could probably imagine a scene. One winter during World War II, a Soviet man named Igor Augustovich Petrov ambushed a German soldier using a Mauser sniper rifle.
This Igor was probably a guerrilla or militiaman with service experience. He hit the German in the knee with a precise shot and disabled him.
Perhaps Igor wanted to capture the German alive, but he shot the kettle hanging on his waist with his pistol.
Fortunately, due to various reasons, the bullet did not penetrate the kettle, and Igor was finally captured alive...
But how to explain the ax inlaid on the face of the corpse?
Wei Ran couldn't help but frowned. Did Ke Kettle throw an accurate flying ax as an emergency response after being shot? Or was he simply venting his anger after being captured alive?
Just when Weiran hadn't figured this out, Saveli's surprised shout came from the distance, "Victor! Come here! Look what I found!"
Hearing this, Wei Ran immediately opened his eyes and sat up, ran out of the tent with his dog Beria, and followed the opponent's headlights with a flashlight.
"look here!"
After Saveli waited for Wei Ran and his dog to run over, stepping on his footprints one step at a time, he immediately pointed to the branch of a pine tree with the stick in his hand.
This branch can be as thick as a thigh, and it is almost two meters away from the ground. At the gap between the branch and the trunk, a rusty German helmet looks like a lampshade, with almost half of it growing into the trunk.
Inside the helmet, there were actually several rusty bullet casings hung with thin wires. In the middle of these bullet casings, which looked like wind chimes, there was also a German square box flashlight hanging with wires. On this square box flashlight, there were
There is still a black leather case that wraps it tightly.
Saveli gently flicked the bullet casings, and suddenly they collided with the helmet and made a crisp and clear knocking sound.
"I also found these"
Saveli threw away the wooden stick in his hand and took out a few more bullet casings from his pocket, "These are Nagant rifle bullets. I also have a very accurate shotgun at home that also uses this kind of bullet."
After taking the bullet and looking at it, Wei Ran couldn't help but raise his eyebrows. These bullet shells were close to the root of the primer, and all had holes drilled through them. These were the same size, with holes the size of mung beans.
A piece of rusty wire remains.
Looking up at the helmet, Wei Ran put the bullet casing into his pocket, then climbed up on the branch and carefully removed the square box flashlight with the leather sheath from inside.
"Did you find anything?" Saveli came over and looked at the small object in Wei Ran's hand and asked curiously.
"Those bullet casings are bullets used by the Soviet army"
"I know that." Saveli nodded.
"But those regular holes in the bullet casings, I guess, were probably made with the hand drill that was already growing in the tree trunk."
"And hang here?"
"And this square box flashlight"
Wei Ran pointed the beam of his headlight at the lens of the flashlight in his hand, "This flashlight looked like this before I took it off. The air shield was raised, the lamp head was facing directly downward, and the red signal mode was turned on. This should be the case in the dark night.
Very conspicuous.”
"It's hard not to notice," Saveli nodded in agreement.
"I guess it's a trap"
Wei Ran casually buckled the flashlight's air-raid cover and put it into his pocket, "Set such a conspicuous red signal source here. If there are Germans around, they will definitely take a look."
"Then he was shot to death by someone from a distance?" Saveli obviously kept up with Wei Ran's pace.
"Maybe, it's just a guess after all."
After Wei Ran finished speaking, he glanced at the two boulders in the distance where the body was found. Compared to this trap, it looked like a very good sniper position at first glance.
It's just that the distance between the two is a bit too close. It's less than a hundred meters in total. Not to mention rifles, even submachine guns can reach this distance, so there must be other sniping positions...
When he thought of this, Wei Ran had already subconsciously looked in the direction of the top of the mountain.
"Victor, why don't you take this off too?" Saveli asked, pointing to the helmet that had grown into the tree trunk and the remaining bullet casings.
"I won't take it off yet, just take a few photos."
Wei Ran said, having already taken out his cell phone to take a photo of the helmet trap, and then said, "You continue searching here, I'll go back and think about it."
"I'll call you again," Saveli assured confidently.
Stepping back to the edge of the tent, Wei Ran couldn't help but start to wonder, what's so special about this place, why did they ambush the Germans here, or in other words, why did the Germans appear here?
Just because of that airdrop box? Seems unlikely...
After much thought, Wei Ran simply put a traction rope on Beria, and under its drag, he walked on snowshoes toward the top of the mountain, trying to find possible sniper positions.
Unfortunately, perhaps because too much time passed, or perhaps because the snow was too deep, he wandered around but found nothing of value at all.
After finding nothing, he returned to the tent again. Seeing that Saveli hadn't come back yet, Wei Ran simply took out the square box flashlight and carefully removed the cracked leather case wrapped around it.
The reason why this square box flashlight is covered with a leather cover is to keep the battery inside warm in this polar environment. On the one hand, it prevents it from making noise due to bumps. But the most important reason is because the iron in winter is sweet.
.
However, what he didn't expect was that when he took off the tattered leather case, he found that there was a coin hidden in the leather case.
Picking up the coin, Wei Ran could not help but secretly say that he was lucky. This was a silver medal issued in 1938 to commemorate the annexation of Austria.
This is different from the annexation of Austria commemorative medal. To be precise, it is actually a "commemorative coin".
However, when Wei Ran turned the silver coin over, he couldn't help but secretly cursed at his bad luck.
Originally, this side of the silver coin should have been embossed with a map of Austria and five raised right hands.
But now, those five hands have been smoothed, and an edelweiss has been carved with extra precision.
The silver coin bounced up with a "ding!", Wei Ran caught it and put it into his pocket, and then focused on the square box flashlight again.
Perhaps thanks to the protection of the leather case outside, this iron square box has been preserved quite well. Although the parts inside have a lot of rust due to battery leakage, they do not seem to affect use, especially there is a spare inside.
All the lamp beads are still intact.
He didn't even have the slightest doubt that as long as the battery was replaced, it would be able to light up and be used normally.
Before he could remove the rotten battery, Zoya's call came from the radio hanging on the tent pole next to him, "Saveli, Victor, can you receive it?"
"Can you get it? Please tell me." Wei Ran picked up the microphone and responded.
"Saveli's father just called. One of his friends in town may have some clues. Do you want to go meet him?"
"When?" Wei Ran asked.
"You can do it at any time," Zoya replied simply, "but it's best for both of you to come back. I don't know that person, but Saveli knows him and knows where he lives."
“We will go back soon”
Weiran had just released the send button when Saveli's surprised and slightly frightened shout came from outside the tent again, "Victor! Come quickly and see what I found!"
