On the morning of the third day of the new year, two Kamaz trucks carrying various excavation equipment drove to Golonid Island, joined Professor Wei Yan and Alexei who were waiting at the dock, and walked along the road covered with thick sediment.
The snowy pothole road drove deep into the small forest.
Ruslan jumped out of the car and shook hands with Wei Ran and Alexei, pointed at the people who were unloading the car and said, "Just leave it to them, Yeager, how long is it expected to take to dig it out?
"
"It will be dug out soon, noon at the latest." An old man who looked at least five or six years older than Professor Alexei replied confidently.
Before he finished speaking, a young man wearing a Lenin hat and a mustache had already pulled down a greasy water pipe from the car. At the same time, several other strong men also carried a load of water pipes for winter use.
Snow blower for removing snow and ice from cars.
Amidst the roar of the engine, these strong men controlled the snow blower and began the preliminary cleaning work around the tail section of the aircraft. The old man named Yeager also turned on the reversing mirror.
motion camera, and then took out a document for Ruslan to sign.
The only thing left to do next was to wait for the wine to be made. As Wei Ran and others watched, the snow around the tail of the plane was quickly blown away by the strong hot wind, revealing the leaf litter under the ice and snow. Front and rear
It didn't take long for even these fallen leaves covered with ice to be blown aside by the strong wind, finally revealing the brown surface.
Just when Wei Ran thought these people were getting ready to dig, the young man who had just thrown a water pipe out of the car dropped a large aluminum basin, and then called the strong men who had just put down the snow blower to come over and help.
, moved out of the car a large bag of corn starch, half a bag of baking soda, and a bucket of white latex.
"What are you planning to do?" Professor Alexei asked in confusion.
"It should be made of refractory materials, right?" Wei Ran guessed uncertainly.
“You guessed it right”
As he spoke, the old man named Yeager had already directed his people to pour all three things into the plastic basin, and the young man also pulled out of the car a hand-held electric mixer and pestle commonly used on construction sites.
Into the aluminum basin.
As the mixer rotates, the three raw materials in the basin are mixed together at an extremely fast speed. When the mixer stops working, there is even a strong man wearing rain boots standing in the basin and starting to step on it.
When the white substance in the basin turned into something similar to dough, these people turned into masons, each pulled a piece of "dough" and wrapped the half of the tail piece tightly in a thick layer.
After everything was done, a strong man jumped into the car and began to use a bicycle air pipe to pump air into the connected oil drums. Yeager personally took the first water pipe that was thrown off and poured some of the oil that smelled of diesel.
However, a liquid with a much higher viscosity was poured around the tail of the aircraft.
"Stay away," the young man reminded carefully.
Seeing this, Wei Ran and others immediately took a few steps back. They watched curiously as those people poured a layer of oil on the cleaned ground, then sprinkled a bag of dry sawdust powder, and then poured a second layer of oil on it.
layer of oil.
When everything was done, these professionals also retreated some distance away, and even the two trucks drove some distance away.
"Get the fire extinguisher ready!" Yeager shouted, holding up a broken horn.
"Ready!" Two strong men holding cart-type fire extinguishers shouted in response.
Upon hearing this, Yeager immediately took out a lighter and lit the plastic bag wrapped around the stick.
When the small torch was thrown in a parabola around the tail wreckage, everyone only heard a soft "whoosh" sound, and the oiled sawdust was instantly ignited.
"All you have to do is wait."
Yeager lighted a cigarette and explained, "Start digging in half an hour, and you will be able to dig it out soon."
"Is that diesel you poured on me just now?" Professor Alexei turned into a curious old baby and asked with interest.
"Not at all"
Yeager explained arrogantly, "Its ingredients are similar to Molotov cocktails, gasoline, diesel, waste engine oil, crushed car tires, and occasionally some recycled garbage cooking oil. In short, just burn it
If it’s long enough, you can add anything to it.”
This seems to be no different from the method of the gypsy people...
Wei Ran muttered to himself, and at the same time he became more and more curious about what the people Ruslan found usually did, because he was so skilled at this routine.
However, Ruslan did not explain in detail, and naturally it was not easy for him to ask questions on such occasions. It was enough to just keep his mouth shut and watch the fun.
As the time passed by for more than twenty minutes, the strong men did not put out the fire. Instead, they each put on an insulating suit with lots of repair marks, and walked into the place where the flames were coming.
, waving the shovel in his hand, he dug up the ground easily and threw the still burning soil around.
While they were busy digging, Yeager and the young man also used an iron bucket to collect the half-full "Molotov Cocktail", mixed it with a large amount of sawdust, and mixed it with a large horse spoon.
Dig it out and sprinkle it on the dug location, while also avoiding the circle of soil around the tail wreckage that is wrapped in insulation material.
With the skilled cooperation of these people, these people basically never stopped from the beginning of digging, and even the digging speed became faster and faster.
Before noon, the tail half of the plane was completely dug out. But what everyone didn't expect was that there was a 200-liter oil drum with remaining green paint buried under the tail.
"Extinguishing!"
As Yeager shouted, the two strong men who had been guarding the fire extinguisher from beginning to end unscrewed the valve without hesitation. Immediately, a large amount of foam spurted out, easily controlling the fire that was about to burn out.
of fire.
"Ruslan, do you want to dig it out?" Yeager took off his hood and asked.
"Dig it out," Ruslan replied without thinking.
"continue"
Yeager waved his hand, and the strong men around him immediately took off their insulating suits and handed them to the young man. They continued to wave shovels and pickaxes and started digging along the iron bucket.
Compared with the half of the tail that had already been dug out, the iron bucket that was originally covered by the tail didn't take much work and was quickly dug out.
Carefully holding a flashlight, he went to the rusty damage on the iron barrel and looked inside. After asking Ruslan, Yeager immediately called his men to get the demolition scissors and cut along the damage.
A hole the size of a washbasin.
"There is a corpse inside." As Yeager spoke, he reached out and took out a brown skull.
Without any instructions at all, the young man pulled a thick canvas blanket from the car and spread it on the snow, and then spread a white sheet on top.
Soon, pieces of human bones were passed from Yeager's hands to those strong men, and finally to the young man, who completed the "human bone puzzle".
However, the old man Yeager obviously did not want to end his work just like that.
Under the dull gazes of Wei Ran and Alexey, he actually ordered his men to move a sieve from the truck that seemed to be used to sift stones on the construction site, and suspended it on the bumpers of the fronts of the two trucks.
, and then directed them to bring up the iron bucket, pour the soil inside onto the sieve, and carefully pass it through the sieve.
"That's all that's left"
Yeager placed a mandible with remaining teeth and a few missing teeth on the corresponding position of the human bone puzzle, and then shook the gas mask canister issued by the Germans in World War II and asked again, "What do you want?"
Open it?"
Ruslan obviously trusted this old man very much and nodded without thinking, "Open it, please."
Yeager smiled, pulled out an AK rifle bayonet from his waist, pried open the gas mask can, and pulled out an oilcloth package tied with rusty wire.
Unscrewing the iron wire and opening the package, there was actually a layer of yellowed waste newspapers inside. When the newspapers were opened layer by layer, everyone found dumbfounded that the innermost package turned out to be a red one that was slightly smaller than the tea bucket.
Russian matryoshka doll!
"How come there is such a thing?" Yeager muttered with a frown, and opened the matryoshka doll layer by layer.
Unfortunately, until the last nesting doll, which was only a circle larger than a thumb, was opened, there was nothing inside.
After looking at the wreckage of the tail with the heat insulation layer removed, Ruslan turned to look at Wei Yan and Professor Alexei.
"First send the bones to where they belong," Professor Alexei said on his own initiative. "Take the rest to our garage. We will find out what happened as soon as possible."
"Then I'll trouble you two."
Ruslan nodded politely, and Yeager immediately directed his people to take out a body bag from the car and collect the bones, and then put the rest of the finds into a plastic storage box, along with the half of the tail.
Loaded into a truck together.
Following the car driven by Wei Ran out of the forest and back to the garage, Yeager and others unloaded the tail of the plane and the finds, accepted the pies and caviar given to them by Zhou Shujin as New Year's gifts, and drove there
direction to the pier.
"Ruslan, who are those people?" As he approached the dock, Wei Ran finally couldn't help but ask the question in his mind.
"Construction worker" Ruslan explained with a smile.
"Construction worker?" Wei Ran was stunned, and couldn't help but muttered in Chinese, "Can't he be a construction worker who builds a shady house? He's too skilled."
Ruslan naturally didn't understand what he said, but Professor Alexei, who was sitting in the back row, couldn't help laughing and asked the doubts in his heart directly.
'They really are construction workers'
Ruslan explained with a smile, "Or they were originally construction workers. They helped decorate and build many projects in our pavilion, especially many emergency construction projects in winter. Of course, this also includes illegal excavations discovered in winter.
We also asked them to help, and we have been cooperating with each other for many years."
"No wonder you are so skilled." Wei Ran and Professor Alexei said in unison, barely believing each other's explanation.
Ruslan smiled when he heard this and took out a thin file bag from the briefcase he had been carrying and handed it to Professor Alexei, "We found out that this is the property of the previous owners of your house.
Condition."
"Did you find anything?" Professor Alexei asked as he took the file bag.
Hearing this, Ruslan shook his head, "Not too optimistic. The previous owner of that land was an ordinary farmer. He was born in 1940 and died five years ago. Although his father participated in World War II, he was an infantryman.
, and he was already killed in the first battle of Kiev."
"Where are the other relatives?" Alexei asked.
"No more." Ruslan shook his head. "Further up, there is just a simple record on the resume of the deceased homeowner's father. His father was a fisherman. There is no more information."
At this point, Ruslan asked, "I remember that I found two frontline flight badges at that time. Didn't they have information on them?"
"No"
Professor Alexei frowned and explained, "Those two flight medals did not come from the same person, one of them was even obtained on the Kursk battlefield."
"I also looked up the name Felix von Goethe"
Wei Ran took up the topic and said, "But there is no relevant record in German official information at all. I even asked the person in charge of an organization for the recovery of missing soldiers from World War II, and she couldn't find any relevant information."
“very normal”
Ruslan replied unsurprisingly, "Many of the archives at that time were destroyed due to the war, not to mention that the Americans took away a large part of them."
"It seems the investigation has reached a deadlock."
Professor Alexei looked at the dock getting closer and closer in the direction of the car, with a deep sense of helplessness in his tone. In fact, this is the case in most of this kind of historical origin work.
After all, history books may record how cruel a battle was, how long it lasted, who won and who lost, how many casualties there were on both sides, and even the impact it had on the battle situation, or the performance of a certain hero.
But the number of casualties can never be accurate to single digits. Often, after the unit of thousands or ten thousand, it becomes a decimal point that can be rounded off as needed - even those omitted numbers, each one represents a human life.
.
"I believe that with the abilities of the two of you, there will be a satisfactory result soon." Ruslan smiled and complimented Wei Ran and Professor Alexey - nice words don't cost money anyway.
"Let's do our best"
Wei Ran and Professor Alexey sighed in unison, which looked very much like the situation when they ran the studio together.
"I'm waiting for your good news"
As Ruslan said, Weiran also stepped on the brakes at the dock, and the former simply pushed open the car door, "Happy New Year, you two."