War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 188 Found ([-] in [-])

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

As the ax in Wei Ran's hand hit the thick tree trunk, the snow accumulated on the canopy also fell down, covering the canvas tent that he and Jima had just set up around the tree trunk.

"The next thing is to make a fire and make a sleigh cart and snowshoes, otherwise we won't be able to go very far with so many things in tow." Jima took the ax from Wei Ran while speaking, "How about you come to make a fire? "

"no problem"

Wei Ran happily agreed, and when Ji Ma walked out of the tent with an ax full of confidence and began to cut trees, he immediately took out the kerosene lamp from the metal book, and lit the bonfire in the center of the tent with the kerosene lighter tied to it.As the flames transpired, the not-so-big tent gradually became warmer.

Tapping on the supplies again, Wei Ran emptied one of the glass jars filled with sugar and filled it with snow and put it beside the campfire to melt slowly, and all the sugar poured out was packed into the interlayer of the backpack.

After finishing the work in the tent, Wei Ran was not idle, and immediately went out to help Ji Ma cut down a pine tree as thick as a thigh, cut it into 1.1 meters sections and moved them all back.

Jima sat on the thickest tree trunk and took a breath, took a canning bottle filled with hot water and took a sip of the sweet sugar water, and then said confidently, "Now we have to find a way to get the log under our butt Split it into planks, and as long as you have planks, you can make sleds, which will be much more convenient for us in the future.”

"But we only have an ax and an engineer shovel." Wei Ran, who was also half dead, had to remind.

"An ax is enough." Ji Ma confidently returned the can to Wei Ran, "Next, I will show you my woodworking skills."

"You still do this?"

"In Inta, where supplies are scarce, many things have to be done by ourselves."

Jima explained briefly, then picked up the axe, first split a piece of wood with a thick wrist into a wooden wedge with a thick end and a thin end, then shifted the target, and started swinging the ax at the thickest tree trunk.

Under Wei Ran's observation, Ji Ma first split a gap with an ax at one end of the wood, and then smashed several wooden wedges into it.

After these wooden wedges opened up the split gap, Ji Ma smashed the rest of the wooden wedges into the end of the gap. In this cycle, it didn't even work for half an hour. Comes with long planks.

With the cooperation of the two of them, a whole log turned into four boards of different thicknesses, and Ji Ma picked up the engineering shovel again, and quickly cleaned the burrs on it.

It's not over yet. Taking advantage of Wei Ran's time to help clean up the other wooden boards with an axe, Ji Ma directly covered the engineer shovel on the bonfire and burned it red, and then heated the end of the first processed wooden board to be extremely smooth.

After finishing the demonstration, Ji Ma handed over the work at hand to Wei Ran, and he cut off the spare chute of the parachute, and quickly made two pairs of snowshoes by using the parachute rope and the torn umbrella surface.

"Your skills are good," Wei Ran said in admiration.

"what is this!"

The energetic Jima said triumphantly, "If you give me a saw, it won't be a big problem for me to build a wooden house with a fireplace here."

"What should I do next?" Wei Ran didn't bother to answer, and handed over the remaining three wooden boards that had been processed.

"It's very simple. Use parachute cloth to cover the flattened part, and when you're done, just put them together."

While talking, Jima whittled a few wooden nails as thick as chopsticks with an axe, then took a piece of parachute cloth to wrap the wooden board, and nailed it firmly on the other side with wooden nails.This job was also not difficult. With the cooperation of the two, it didn't take long to complete all the work.

Finally, the four boards were fixed side by side with the paracord and the trunk with a thick wrist, and Ji Ma finally nodded with satisfaction, "That's all right, with this sled here, we just need to pull it to go, now I just hope that correctional camp isn’t too far away from us.”

Wei Ran glanced at the time on the watch, "After dawn, let's find a way to determine the current location."

Jima asked, "Do you still remember what's on the map?"

Wei Ran closed his eyes and thought for a while, reached out and picked up a flaming branch from the side of the campfire and blew it out, and drew a rough map directly on the wooden board.Seeing this, Ji Ma simply picked up a wooden stick to blow out the flames, and added details such as mountains or lakes to the map drawn by Wei Ran.

After the two of them had nothing to add to this rough map, Wei Ran pointed to the two intersecting meandering lines he had just drawn and said, "The thick one is the Ob River, and the thin one is the Wobi River." The Ikar River, we just need to find the Wojkar River, and then follow the river to find the correctional camp, the question now is whether the river is to the north of us or to the south of us."

Jima nodded, and then added, "There are a large number of lakes distributed on both ends of this river near the Ural Mountains. If there is no accident, our current location should be near these lakes. Victor, we will go to the lake tomorrow. Going west, how about going to the Ural Mountains? We are here, and we can vaguely see the mountains in such a dark sky, which means that they should not be far away from us. As long as we find a relatively higher place at the foot of the Ural Mountains, Maybe we can see where we are now."

"climb mountains?"

Wei Ran frowned, this is not an easy task, but besides this choice, there seems to be no better way, after hesitating for a moment, he could only nod and agree with Jima's suggestion.

After discussing the general plan, the two each drank another glass of energy-enhancing sugar water, curled up on the pine needles on both sides of the campfire and fell asleep one after another.

When it was bright outside the tent, the two of them put away their materials and wrapped them in a canvas tent and fixed them on the simple sleigh. Then each tied a paracord around their waists, put on snowshoes and pulled the fully loaded sleigh To the mountains at the other end of the taiga.

While the two of them braved the wind and snow and headed towards their destination, Karp, who was far away in the Hongqi Forest Farm, was staring meticulously at the constantly moving light spots on the computer screen, while Teacher Dalia and Alili were leaving the military by plane at the same time. Base, rushed to the hot spring camp on the other side of the Ural Mountains.After all, what could be more comfortable than soaking in a scalding hot spring in this freezing weather?

At the door of the time studio in Volgograd, the young man from Germany, Ralph, had to return to the hotel not far away after waiting again to no avail.

It’s not just this young man who didn’t wait for Wei Ran, but also a media company that popped up from nowhere, but their target was not the two photos donated by Wei Ran, but the ones used as the background in the latest two interviews What the heck is that pretty box.

Another two days passed by in a blink of an eye, and Wei Ran and Jima finally walked out of the forest after going through all kinds of hardships, and climbed up a short mountain that was only 200 meters high and covered with a lot of snow.

Under a pine tree on the top of the mountain, Wei Ran, whose eye sockets were painted black with charcoal ash, squinted his eyes, looked up at Ji Ma who had climbed to the top of the tree, and shouted loudly, "Can you see it?"

"Barely able to see!"

On the top of the canopy, the quarter horse rode on a fork as thick as an arm, stretched its neck to look far away, and kept answering, "The direction I can see, there is a large and long stretch of land on our left hand side. If there is no accident, there should be a river there, but I don’t know if it is the Vojkal River we are looking for.”

"Just treat it as it is!" Wei Ran, who was standing under the tree, shouted loudly, "Get down quickly after remembering the location and direction, and let's rush there as soon as possible before it's dark."

"Wait!" Jima lowered his voice slightly, "There seem to be some reindeer at the foot of the mountain!"

"Never mind the reindeer, we're not short of food now"

Wei Ran helplessly reminded that Jima really deserves to be a hunter. Although he didn't catch any big prey in the past two days, there were already several skinned rabbits on the sleigh cart behind them.Even those rabbit skins were carefully fixed under the sled by Quarter Horse to reduce friction.

"What do rabbits eat?"

The quarter horse quickly came down from the tree, "They don't even have fat on their bodies. If we can't replenish enough fat in this kind of damn weather, we won't be able to last long. Don't waste time, let's get a reindeer to improve it." dinner."

"Now you are wasting time." Wei Ran shook his head helplessly, and had no choice but to follow Ji Ma to run down the mountain on the snow.

As the distance between him and the reindeer herd he found got closer, the former's movements became slower and slower.Eventually even the dragging sled was tied to a tree by them.

Gently pulling the safety, Ji Ma pointed the muzzle at the nearest reindeer, and decisively pulled the trigger while the reindeer propped its front legs on the tree trunk and stretched its neck to nibble on the pine needles.

The moment the clear gunshot sounded, a cloud of conspicuous blood mist burst out from the neck of the reindeer, and at the same time it fell to the ground, the rest of the reindeer also moved and disappeared in an instant.

"Dinner is ready! Get ready to pitch the tent!"

Ji Ma jumped up amidst the cheers, and rushed down the halfway up the mountain, while Wei Ran beside him could only untie the simple sled car behind him and slid to catch up.

"Good luck!" Ji Ma shouted happily from a long distance away from Wei Ran, "Hurry up and help me with the ax! Victor, would you like a mouthful of deer blood?"

"forget it"

Wei Ran refused again and again without even thinking about it. He didn't want to be in this kind of icy and snowy place, because half of his butt was frozen because of the cold.

"Continuing north along the Ob River is the territory of the Nenets people. They drink fresh deer blood to supplement salt and vitamins." While talking, Jima cut open the reindeer's chest with an ax and stretched out his hand He went in and pulled out the huge heart, brought it to his mouth and took a deep breath, "You really don't want to try it?"

"Remember to stay away from me when you are running away." Wei Ran once again flatly refused.

"Don't worry, I have Stalin in my stomach, nothing can knock him down."

While talking, Ji Ma took a hard bite of the steaming heart until it creaked and chewed. After swallowing the completely redundant meat, he took off the deerskin before the corpse was completely cooled. , and then chopped off a few pieces of rib meat with fat and four legs, while Wei Ran set up a tent not far away and lit a bonfire.

Around the constantly jumping bonfire, pieces of venison full of fat were pierced by pine sticks and slowly roasted to produce sizzling fat. Before the fat fell to the ground, it was carefully picked up by Ji Ma and Wei Ran in a canning bottle. catch.

After resting at the foot of the mountain for the night, the two of them each applied a layer of reindeer fat on their lips and face in the early morning of the next day, then quickly gathered the supplies and hurried to their destination.

Walking down without stopping all day, a frozen river suddenly appeared in the dense coniferous forest. The two compared the Ural Mountains due west and the map in their memory. After some discussion, they finally decided to follow the covered A thick layer of snow covered the frozen river and continued westward overnight.

"Victor, what if we go in the wrong direction?"

In the turbulent night with the miserable green aurora, Jima, who was walking ahead with a gun in his hand, asked a little nervously, "Or is the river under our feet not the Voikal River at all?"

“It is unlikely to find the wrong river”

Wei Ran, who was pulling the sled and walking behind, gasped and said, "The Senia River in the south is more than 100 kilometers away from the correctional camp. Even if Teacher Dalia is a lunatic, he will not take us away. Throw it so far away. As for the river further north on the map, it is already more than a hundred kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. On both sides of the river, you can only see tundra, and it is impossible to have such a large needle leaf Forest."

Wei Ran stopped and took a breath, and continued, "There is another simpler way to verify that as long as we continue to walk along the river, if there is a fork in the river to the north, it proves that we have not gone Wrong direction, and I didn’t find the wrong river.”

Ji Ma nodded secretly when he heard the words, and waited for Wei Ran to rest enough before continuing to walk along the river.

With the two of them traveling day and night, at nine o'clock that night, the river under their feet really forked!

"It seems that we really did not go wrong"

Until this time, Wei Ran, who was in charge of exploring the road with a gun, was really relieved, "Jima, if there is no accident, we only need to continue along the river to the northwest for about 8 kilometers, and we will be near the intersection of the three rivers." Found the correctional camp, so shall we move on, or wait until daylight?"

"Go ahead!"

Ji Ma, who was in charge of pulling the sled, said out of breath, "After walking the last distance, we will camp directly at the correctional camp, and we will blow up there tomorrow morning."

"Change it again?" Wei Ran handed the rifle in his hand to the other party.

"No, no." Ji Ma shook his head feebly, then pushed down the zipper on his chest, "Go, keep going."

Seeing this, Wei Ran stopped insisting, reopened the insurance, and continued to move towards the destination along the river on the left.

When the time came to around [-]:[-] midnight, Wei Ran and Jima finally saw the intersection of the three rivers, and at the same time saw a particularly abrupt sentry tower on the bank of the river.The two looked at each other, and immediately worked together to drag the sled towards the coniferous forest on the shore.

Under the cover of the coniferous forest, the two cautiously touched under the sentry tower. This building is not so much a sentry tower, it is more appropriate to say that it is a lighthouse or a gun tower.

A pure stone concrete building, the base is nearly eight meters in diameter, and becomes thinner as it goes up, and at the top of a full three-story building, the entire outline becomes about the same size as the base.

The two circled the base twice before finding the entrance and exit covered by the snow.Compared to the building itself, the entrance and exit are pitifully small. When it was dug out, it was not even 1.5 meters high and only one meter wide.

As the rusty iron door was pried open by Ji Ma with difficulty at gunpoint, the first thing the two of them saw was a half-sitting frozen corpse on the spiral staircase!

The corpse was wearing an old-fashioned down jacket, and was holding an SKS semi-automatic rifle in his arms, but what was particularly frightening was that the muzzle of the gun was stuck in the chin socket of the corpse, and the boots on his feet carried are tied together through the trigger guard.

"It's suicide." Jima said with certainty, "You can tell by his attire that he should be a hunter."

"Is there a residential area near here?" Wei Ran asked with a frown.

"I don't know." Ji Ma shook his head bluntly, turned out a headlamp that he carried with him, put in the battery and turned it on to the maximum, then carefully walked around the corpse and climbed up on the spiral stairs.

And behind him, after Wei Ran closed the iron door, he stuck it inside with a sled cart, and then took out the Mauser bayonet in the metal book while Ji Ma was not paying attention, and carefully cut open the body's pocket. , and then took out the rifle again.

As he gently pulled the bolt, Wei Ran found that the magazine of this rifle was empty and there was no bullet at all.

Reluctantly, he rummaged through the pockets of the corpse's clothes. In addition to a few empty bullet casings, there was also a hunting knife that was often seen on Inta hunters and a few Russian rubles.

Putting these things back next to the corpse, Wei Ran walked up to the second floor following Jima's footprints, and then saw wolf skins, deer skins, fox skins and even a huge one hanging on the roof. Bearskin!

And at the corner of the wall, there is a simple hearth built with stones. There are still some ashes left in the hearth, and on top of the hearth is a small stainless steel pot.

Ji Ma carefully lifted the lid of the small stainless steel pot, took out a small book from inside, flipped through it, then threw it to Wei Ran and said, "The unlucky guy downstairs is called Baolia, and he lives on the bank of the Ob River 80 kilometers away. A hunter in a small town called Shureshkare. Of course, judging by these harvests, perhaps we should call him a poacher more accurately."

"How did you die?" Wei Ran had already opened the palm-sized notebook while asking.

"According to his suicide note, he encountered a blizzard when he came here to poach, and his reindeer ran away with a sled, and this ghost place was surrounded by wolves again. After running out of bullets and this All the fuel in the sentry tower and then suffered from severe diarrhea, and chose to kill himself before freezing to death."

Following Jima's explanation, Wei Ran also turned the book full of hunting harvests in his hand to the last page with words, and saw roughly the same content as what Jima recounted, but what surprised him was that this The time when the suicide note was written turned out to be in 2003. In other words, this unlucky ghost has been lying here for more than ten years without being discovered.

It is also thanks to the low temperature in this ghost place and the iron gate blocked from the inside, otherwise, the poacher would have already filled the stomach of the wolf.

"Victor, how about resting here for the night?"

Jima said as he walked down, "I'll go outside to get some fuel. This sentry tower is high enough. After dawn, we might be able to see the correction camp we're looking for."

"Be careful of being surrounded by wolves." Wei Ran casually threw the notebook on the window sill, "I'll go to the roof to keep an eye on it for you."

"By the way, we can clean the small stainless steel pot so that we can have hot soup at night."

While Ji Ma was speaking, he had already got out of the sentry tower with an ax in one hand and an empty sleigh cart in the other.

And Wei Ran, holding a small stainless steel pot, walked through a wooden door covered with iron at the end of the spiral staircase to the top of the building.What surprised him was that on the top floor of the sentry tower, in addition to a high-power searchlight produced in the Soviet era, there were actually three rusty DShka heavy machine guns erected in different directions!

But it is a pity that the key parts of these three heavy machine guns have been removed at some point, and even the shooting holes facing the guns are tightly sealed with cement.

Wei Ran, who found nothing, took out the binoculars from the metal book and looked around, but unfortunately, except for the snow-covered coniferous forest and the river winding to the end of his field of vision, he couldn't find the shadow of the correctional camp at all.

"Could it be the wrong place? It shouldn't be." Wei Ran muttered to himself, aiming the binoculars at the headlamp Jima wore on his forehead.

After staring at each other for a while, Wei Ran put away the binoculars, stretched out his hand to hold up a handful of pure white snow, and carefully washed the small stainless steel pot that he had been carrying in his other hand.

When Ji Ma used a sleigh cart to pull a few small pine trees with thick arms back to the sentry tower, Wei Ran heard the former shout excitedly, "Victor, I just found out in the forest A minecart! Looks like we'll be able to find the correctional camp soon!"

"Did you find anything else?" Wei Ran, who was still on the roof, bent over to ask questions, and at the same time threw down the small stainless steel pot in his hand that had just been cleaned with snow, "By the way, put a pot of snow on it."

"There are still utility poles, but most of them are down."

Ji Ma bent down and picked up the small stainless steel pot to wipe off the peaking snow, and continued to shout in a hurry, "After dawn, we will walk along those electric poles to the forest, and we will probably find that building soon!"

　Thank you Flying Hands for rewarding 200 points

　　Thanks warwolfkkk for rewarding 100 points

　　
　
(End of this chapter)