The Courtyard House: The Little Red Devil Returning from the Peninsula

There was no sound when the wooden plank was lifted.

Zhao Weiguo was the first to slip into the drainage ditch. The ditch was perpetually dark; the moss in the cement cracks was soaked with night dew. He slipped and had to brace himself against the ditch wall with his elbows to regain his balance. The low, smoked lamp overhead only illuminated the edge of the ditch; the bottom was black, so black he couldn't see his own fingers.

Gardenia followed closely behind, with two soldiers from the railway bringing up the rear. The wooden planks were put back in place, with the mud marks facing outwards, exactly the same as the measurements taken three days ago.

1:20.

Seven hundred and ninety-eight men lay prone outside the station area, arranged in three layers along the three retreat routes. Three hundred and fifty-eight entered the core area, two hundred and forty were scattered around the outer perimeter for five kilometers, and two hundred were positioned at support positions on the south side. None of the four heavy machine guns were brought into the station area. Zhao Tieshan's words were clear: "Going in with the heavy machine guns would just be providing targets for the Japanese. Set them up on the outer perimeter, and they'll fire when the time is right."

Zhao Tieshan was squatting in an abandoned coal mine entrance on the outer edge, with a list of railcar numbers and requisition slips tucked in his pocket. Each group of detonators was marked with a fingerprint, indicating how many, their numbers, and who had received them—all in black and white. A demolition expert had just finished receiving his and was walking out when he turned back after a couple of steps.

"The color of this sealing wax is wrong."

Zhao Tieshan took the bag and examined it under the kerosene lamp. The sealing wax was yellowish, quite different from the dark red it had been when it came from the factory. He scraped off the wax from the bag opening; the fuse number matched the requisition slip—they were correct. The outer bag had been changed during transport, and the wax had been applied afterward.

"The fuse is fine, the bag was switched." Zhao Tieshan put the fuse back in the new bag, resealed it with wax, and had the demolition expert press his second fingerprint in the signature column. "Let's go."

This old man has spent his entire life dealing with iron and gunpowder. Weighing and signing things under his supervision is more serious than going to war. The two main targets—the ammunition depot and the oil depot—have already been identified. The airport and the northern miscellaneous goods warehouse will only be targeted with small fires placed on tarpaulins to contain the flames, not spread evenly across six fire points. The supplies we have are enough to ensure the two main targets burn thoroughly; spreading them out to burn anywhere else will prevent them from burning completely.

The telephone line was the first thing to move.

Zhao Weiguo led his men to the junction box in the southeast corner of the station area. They supported the wire end with a cotton cloth, and the sound of metal-on-metal cutting pliers wrapped in three layers of cotton cloth could not be heard more than thirty paces away. The wire broke in two, and they wrapped it in cotton cloth and pressed it into the wet mud. The ground was smoothed out, making it look exactly like the cement seam next to it.

The water pump control box wasn't damaged. Zhao Weiguo only removed the terminal block; the water pump stopped halfway before jamming. This thing can be disassembled and reassembled, and the pump can still run after everyone leaves, but it won't run tonight.

The water tower remains untouched. Houses are not to be burned. Water sources are not to be touched. The three group leaders each repeated this, their voices so low that only their own people could hear them.

The North General Goods Warehouse was the first place to start smoking, but the fire started the slowest.

This warehouse stores repackaged fuel, not the main fuel depot. Three Molotov cocktails weren't thrown into the warehouse; one was placed under the door threshold, one was tucked into the edge of an oilcloth, and one was placed under a ventilation vent. The fire first licked the oilcloth, then slowly heated the repackaged containers. The slow start was intentional.

Zhao Weiguo placed a white cloth under the door frame. The meaning was clear: this place is now under someone's control, don't come back.

When the fire department sees smoke coming from the North General Goods Warehouse, they'll be the first to rush over. By the time they get there, the fire at the main target is already out of control.

When Lao Zhou led three demolition experts to the armory, they heard a commotion.

There are people in the warehouse.

They weren't patrolling; they were the guards who lived inside. It's the rule that armory guards don't take their guns off when they sleep. Old Zhou listened for about ten breaths against the wall, hearing them turn over and the sound of rifle butts hitting the floor.

His original plan was to send the time-delay fuse along the drainage cracks in the abandoned wall to the bottom of the moisture-proof wooden planks. Now there are people sleeping on the planks.

A demolition expert gestured: "Are you still sending them away?"

Old Zhou shook his head. He squatted there for a while, thinking, and his left shoulder started to tighten again. He hadn't felt any pain when the bullet went through him five months ago, but now, squatting for so long, it felt like a tendon was twisting inside his shoulder blade.

He pulled the fuse out of the drain crack and moved it to a different spot. There was a wooden frame outside the wall, piled high with tarpaulin and bundled straw. He tucked the fuse between the frame and the tarpaulin; it was the frame, not the warehouse, that was going to burn.

"Let the people in the warehouse run if they can," Old Zhou said in a very low voice. "Take out your guns and shoot."

The demolition expert glanced at him but didn't say anything. Old Zhou was a tough guy with a soft heart; he cursed all the time, but he never actually put explosives into a crowd. He remembered all forty-three lives lost on Beishan Road, every single one of them.

"Two hundred and five." Old Zhou turned his pocket watch over and glanced at it. "Nobody is allowed to turn around."

The parking lot is the busiest place.

Forty wagons were lined up on three tracks, each numbered. Zhao Tieshan checked the seals of each wagon one by one, crossing out any that were wrong. Empty wagons could be used as makeshift fires to block the road, but explosives were not to be wasted. Fourteen wagons were confirmed to be loaded with artillery shells, nine with gasoline and lubricating oil, and seventeen with winter grain and empty wagons. "Where the doors aren't open doesn't count; proceed according to the schedule," were Zhao Tieshan's exact words.

The six fuse groups worked separately, with each group having four to eight sections. The shell carriage was the key and most difficult part, as many of the doors were deformed, and the fuse wires, when inserted through the door gaps, were easily caught by the metal corners.

Group Five encountered this problem. The fuse wire was stuck in the metal corner of the car door, and they couldn't pull or push it. The group leader squatted down and looked at it for a long time, then took out pliers, cut off the last piece of wire, and re-laid the fuse next to the axle box under the car.

"Already gone." He replied with a short message. Two words, no explanation needed.

Something went wrong at the oil depot.

Gardenia and two electricians crouched under the first oil tank. The valve stem was stuck shut with sludge and couldn't be turned. One of the electricians took out a knife and scraped away the sludge, finally revealing the valve stem threads after a long time.

The patrol sentry has arrived.

Footsteps approached from the south, unhurried and gentle. Zhi Zi quickly pressed down on their heads, and the three of them lay flat against the bottom of the oil tank. The tank had been exposed to the sun all day, and the residual heat on the metal still burned their palms.

The sentry walked up to the oil tank and paused. He was lighting a cigarette. It took him two matches to light one, and the light shone for three seconds before reaching the bottom of the tank.

The footsteps faded into the distance.

Zhi Zi breathed a sigh of relief, but her hand didn't leave the valve stem. The first valve was only opened a finger's width, letting the oil seep down the pipe wall. It couldn't be opened too wide, or the oil would spray out and the fire would spread to the evacuation route; then it wouldn't be the oil depot burning, but their own people. The second valve was opened even smaller, and the valve stem was wedged in place to prevent the entire pipeline from being emptied and burning through the evacuation route.

Zhao Weiguo's short code came from afar, just two words: "Oil tank. Main target."

He paused, then added two more words: "Water tower. Don't touch it."

Gardenia unplugged the power strip and moved to a different spot. Walking the same path twice would just make her an easy target for the sentries.

The airport is located five kilometers northwest of the station area, connected to the railway by a gravel road.

The four men Duan Peng chose didn't go into the hangar. They only did three things: place kindling on the wooden door of the hangar, put fuses next to the fuel depot, and spread tarpaulins around the three intact aircraft. The one with its wings removed and piled against the wall didn't count. Zhao Tieshan had said, "A chicken without wings doesn't count as a chicken; don't record it as a victory."

There was a well next to the pilots' dormitory. The four of them walked around it, even if it meant taking an extra fifty steps, rather than taking a shortcut.

The ground crew had sharp ears. An electrician bumped his metal toolbox while laying tarpaulin, making a metallic clanging sound. The on-duty ground crew sent six men out to investigate. Meanwhile, those on the outer perimeter were already waiting. A sound of wheels rolling over stones came from the north river channel, like a car crossing the bridge. The six ground crew turned towards the north river channel to investigate. They didn't fire, nor did they give chase. By the time they found nothing in the river channel, the airport tarpaulin had already heated up.

The two military dogs I keep barked twice. After barking, they lay down again. These two beasts, just like their owner, are a beat slow to react at 1:30 in the morning.

One forty.

When the first short whistle sounded, all six fire points simultaneously began to count down.

The first wisps of smoke to appear in the North General Goods Warehouse were the slowly rising smoke from the tarpaulins—not pungent, but persistent. The wooden frames outside the armory began to catch fire, the flames climbing up and licking at the moisture-proof wooden planks at the base of the warehouse walls. The fuses at the vehicle yard had completed their delay, and blue flames peeked through the gaps in the first row of artillery shells. The oil depot hadn't yet caught fire, but the smell of oil was already present under the first tank; oil was seeping out along the pipe walls. The tarpaulins at the airport had just been heated and hadn't yet reached their ignition point.

Zhao Weiguo didn't look at the fire. He only looked at his pocket watch and the short code. Each short code was sent only once, and then the positions were switched. If a group didn't receive a reply, no one on the outer ring was allowed to enter the station area to look for anyone. These were his exact words to Zhao Tieshan before he set off: "There are only two possibilities if there's no reply: either we're finished, or we're retreating. If you go in to look, it's the third possibility, and you're finished too."

The code from parking lot group five was a minute late. Zhao Weiguo's palms were sweating. Then the words "departed" came through, and he relaxed his grip.

At 1:50, the fire caught up with the shell.

The first muffled thud came from the direction of the depot. It wasn't an explosion, but the muffled sound of ammunition in the shell wagons being heated to a critical point, about to detonate en masse. The wagon doors were forced open by the internal pressure, and sparks rolled out along the rails like a fiery serpent. The nine fuel wagons were right next to the shell wagons; the sparks ignited as they rolled over.

The first oil tank at the oil depot spewed flames. It wasn't a sudden "boom"; the fire first appeared from the weld seam on the tank top, seeking its way in—the weakest point. The flames grew larger and larger, and the tank top glowed red-hot. The second tank didn't catch fire directly; the heat from the first cracked its walls, and oil leaked from the cracks, mixing with red-hot coal dust, flowing downwards.

The fire siren sounded. One, two, three.

The water pump wasn't working. The telephone line was broken. The fire department rushed out from three directions, colliding in the center of the station. Nobody knew where to go first. Some shouted for the North Goods Warehouse, some for the parking lot, and some for the oil depot. Three roads, three directions, sixty or seventy people were crammed into the intersection, pushing and shoving each other.

A sergeant wanted to remove the water tower valve to connect to the fire hydrant. Zhi Zi, watching from the shadows, ordered the people on the outer perimeter of the airport to sound two whistles, imitating the fire brigade's assembly call. The sergeant was startled and led his men towards the airport.

The water tower remained untouched. The houses were not burned down. The water source was not compromised. Zhao Weiguo drew these three lines three times, and each group leader recited them once. It wasn't just talk; it was ingrained in his very being.

The fire at the airport started last. The tarpaulin finally reached its ignition point, and the wooden doors of the hangars for the three intact military aircraft caught fire first, then the fire licked into the hangars. The aircraft skins were made of canvas wrapped around aluminum tubing frames; the canvas caught fire first, and the aluminum tubing bent and deformed in the high temperature. The three aircraft burned like three candles, the flames illuminating half of the airport in a fiery red glow.

The plane with its wings removed and piled against the wall was still just a dark shadow. A chicken without wings can't be cooked.

At 1:58, Zhao Weiguo ordered a retreat.

The 358 people in the core area retreated in four groups to the south fork in the road. The routes were pre-planned, and there were people waiting to meet them on each road.

Old Zhou was the last to leave the parking lot. He took the remaining two fuses out of the bag, glanced at the numbers, and put them back in the bag. He applied the sealing wax and tied the bag's drawstring tightly.

"You have to keep as many as you take," he muttered to himself. Zhao Tieshan's rule was that you had to count everything, whether you'd used them all or not. If you were short one, you'd have to write a self-criticism.

As soon as Lao Zhou turned out of the parking lot, car lights came on from the south gate.

The enemy reacted faster than expected. A patrol team, along with two armored vehicles, rushed out from the south gate, their headlights piercing the night and illuminating the road in a blinding white light.

Three outer firing positions opened fire simultaneously. They didn't shoot the vehicle itself, but first the headlights; once they went out, the vehicle was blind. Then they shot the tires. The first armored vehicle's tires exploded, the vehicle veered and plunged into a pile of coal ash, its headlights extinguished. The second vehicle, stopped at the bridgehead, dared not advance, and its machine gun sprayed wildly into the darkness, bullets hitting the rails and sparks flying.

The four heavy machine guns only fired two rounds. Zhao Tieshan had said that heavy machine guns weren't for killing people, but for blocking roads. Two rounds were enough to let them know there were tough guys here. Firing any more would be a waste of ammunition and just making them targets for the artillery.

The South Fork Road support team pulled a steel cable across the road, about a foot off the ground. The core team members crouched down and crawled under the cable, squatting down as they passed. After the last person had crossed, the cable was pulled back, leaving the road spotless, without a trace.

The casualties occurred in the last seven minutes.

As one group was retreating across the tracks, they ran into the station patrol team. Less than thirty paces apart, both sides opened fire simultaneously.

The platoon leader and two demolition experts fell instantly. The support team deployed smoke to block the entrance and sneaked in to drag the bodies out. All three bodies were pulled out, and the mission tags were used to identify them. Only after all three mission tags were found could they be moved from the "not returned" list to "dead and awaiting nuclear detection." Before all the tags were found, no one was allowed to say "dead," only "didn't come back."

Another group was hit by shrapnel at the south fork in the road. Machine guns from armored vehicles swept through, and shrapnel flew into the crowd. Five men could walk, three couldn't. The seriously wounded were carried onto a captured truck that still had half a tank of fuel left, enough to get to the second stretch of the riverbank.

Yang Xiuqin crouched in the back of the truck, stopping the bleeding of the wounded. Without a light, she assessed the injuries by feeling the location of the wounds. She used gauze to pack the wounds on the arms, stabilize broken bones in the legs, and fill in areas on the abdomen that couldn't be pressed down. Blood stained her hands a dark red, but she didn't bother wiping it away, treating each wound one by one. She meticulously recorded each wound on a sheet of oiled paper: which wound, where it was, what kind of injury, and how much gauze was used.

"First, get across the river alive," she said, only one sentence. "Once across, we'll decide what's important."

2:05 PM. The last group withdrew from the South Fork Road.

From infiltration to withdrawal, it took forty-five minutes.

None of the nine bodies remained in the station area. All twenty-one wounded soldiers crossed the steel cable. The outer ring photo team only took three photos of the fire wall on the railcars, the burning oil tanks, and the collapsed engine room. The negatives were brought by Zhao Tieshan from Yangquan; he only brought three, not one more. The destruction of six warehouses, forty railcars, the severely damaged oil depot, and the complete burning of three military aircraft are confirmed. The enemy casualties are approximately four hundred and thirty; the dead and wounded are indistinguishable at the moment due to the ongoing fire, making it impossible for anyone to go inside and count. The complete tonnage and remaining railway capacity will need to be verified upon returning.

When Yamaguchi took the count, it was still dark.

Duan Peng squatted on a rock, counting them one by one. Seven hundred and sixty-eight were combat-ready. Twenty-one were wounded. Nine were killed in action. The nine bodies were wrapped in blankets and placed on stretchers, separate from the wounded. The two couriers who had cared for the wounded mule in Pingding were not included in tonight's count; they were listed separately.

"Forty-five minutes." Duan Peng finished reporting the numbers, paused for a moment, and then said, "One key hub was burned. Nine lives."

Zhao Weiguo didn't reply. He stood at the mountain pass looking back. The sky in the direction of Jingxing was still red, the fire still burning. That red light reflected on half the sky, like the sunset had gone astray.

"The trucks will only take the seriously wounded across the second section of the riverbank." Zhao Weiguo turned around, his back to the firelight. "Once we cross the riverbank, we'll abandon the trucks. The whole team will take the Taihang wilderness trails."

Duan Peng stood up and brushed the dirt off his pants. "Take the unpaved road? That'll take three or four more days."

"After daybreak, it won't just be people chasing after us," Zhao Weiguo said without further explanation.

He knew that Okamura Yasuji controlled more than one airfield. Even if the one in Jingxing burned down, the ones in Shijiazhuang, Baoding, and Nanyuan in Beiping could still take off. Infantry couldn't catch up, but planes could. Easy routes had roads, and planes could see where there were roads. The trails in the Taihang Mountains were difficult to traverse, but planes couldn't see them.

Old Zhou, leaning on a piece of wood he had found, with a sling over his left shoulder, stood at the back of the line. He glanced back at the red glow on the horizon.

"The fire in Jingxing won't be extinguished even by noon tomorrow."

Zhao Weiguo was already looking ahead. The dark shadow of the Taihang Mountains blocked their path, like a wall without a door. All 798 people, plus the two wounded mules, walked into the shadows.

The firelight behind them was slowly obscured by the mountains. But Zhao Weiguo knew that what had been started wouldn't be extinguished so quickly. Okamura Yasuji would receive the report after dawn: a supply hub, forty railcars, three airplanes—gone in forty-five minutes.

He won't just send infantry to pursue.