My Team Leader My Team Chapter 23 The cloud layer on the Yunnan Plateau was so low that C46 had just climbed out of the fog, and then it flew back into the clouds.

  In the majestic cloud layer, it is like a paper fold, in the air wave, it is overturned, but those strange and wonderful cloud layers look like solids, like vast and unmatched flowing mountains.

  We were tossed around the cabin like cargo. Every person who grabbed onto a fixed point became a human handhold, with several people clinging to them, and barf bags flew actively around us, but who cared about them?

  The cabin was still tilted and the entire plane shook as it climbed.

  The pilot in the cockpit yelled wildly, and civilization also had to degenerate into barbarism in such a harsh environment. He scolded his plane: "Climb! Climb! Otherwise I'll be done for! Damn it, climb!"

  The jolts at takeoff were vertical, which was normal, but the violent ascent in turbulent air made them horizontal, and this old plane shook so hard it seemed about to come apart - not figuratively, literally. A cargo tie-down ring that Maelstrom had been clinging to came loose with a clang, and he cursed loudly as he and several people who'd been clinging to him crashed down on top of us.

  The shrill, earsplitting wail of the engines almost drowned out our own cries as the plane finally burst out of the turbulent air and climbed above the clouds. It suddenly leveled off, and the sunlight from above the clouds stabbed painfully at our eyes through the portholes. We quieted down from our mutual clawing and tearing, and a solitary cloud pillar rose nearly vertically from the layer below, giving the illusion that it was supporting the sky, with the sun shining brightly behind it.

  The co-pilot is kissing his dashboard, "Tonight I'll take you to my bed! Damn old prostitute!"

  "Ha ha, it's not your turn yet! I'm going to fly this old prostitute to the moon!"

  We celebrated in a Chinese way, shivering and huddled together, staring blankly at the clouds outside the porthole. I don't like being touched, although there was no choice but to be squeezed together, yet still, one by one, the hands that grasped my skin left their imprints.

  The clouds at the edge of Yunnan create an illusion that one can step on them and walk, they form their own world.

  Kang Ya licked her lips and said, "It looks like it can be eaten."

  The bean pancake had a reverent look on its face, "My dad said that gods live in this place."

  The dragon grasped the handle and said, "There's still a dragon living in it, a cat is sleeping on the clouds, several tens of thousands of miles long, and even if it sleeps for several tens of thousands of years. It swallows you from this handle and pulls you out when you're already in Northeast China. Our Heilongjiang River is just such a bald-tailed dragon transformed."

  Hao Shouyi gave him a sideways glance, "You're scared yourself, must you scare others to death?"

  The exposed mystery dragon haha laughed, now we all calm down, so we all start caring for each other.

  The co-pilot threw all the canvas that was piled up in the cockpit and didn't know what to do with it over to us, "Chinese soldiers, we really don't want to risk our lives delivering frozen meat. But you have to leave them behind after landing."

  The English I learned in school is now spoken with great difficulty, but thanks to my father's strictness, I remember it well. I said to him in English: "Thank you very much. How long will we be flying?"

  The American's eyes lit up with delight, "English? Great. We just climb and then descend, and then we can have the terrible British afternoon tea." He leaned back in his pilot's seat, gesturing to the climbing and descending with his hands, and scrunched up his face like a bitter melon to show his attitude towards British tea. I wanted to respond with a joke, but Not Spicy happily interrupted me while looking out of the porthole.

  His non-spicy expression was radiant, "They even followed up with numbness."

  I saw from his position an aircraft darting out from the tail of C46, agile and ferocious, it had been hiding behind the clouds, when the cumbersome transport plane climbed away from the deadly cumulus clouds, it suddenly appeared.

  "I shouted loudly in English: 'Fighter planes! Japan!'"

  Our two drivers have already practiced their reactions in such bad conditions like fighter pilots, they heard me shout and saw the direction I was pointing. The nose of the plane suddenly dived down, they tried to dive back into the clouds without any buffering process. That agile Zero fighter flew over, starting to fire when it swooped past from under the tail.

  The cramped cargo hold suddenly opened with several portholes, I saw a man violently shudder and then collapse on the snake's buttocks. The 12.7mm machine gun killed several people in our cargo hold with one burst, but because they were standing too crowded, they didn't even fall down.

  C-46 resumed its violent shaking, it wildly wanted to escape into the clouds. Airflow rushed in from the bullet holes, I looked at not spicy dead clinging to the newly shot bullet holes to keep stable, the bandage on his severed finger had come loose, fluttering in the cockpit like a defeated army flag. No one shouted, because the strong airflow made it impossible to shout.

  Before we dived into the clouds, Zero made a second attack. This time I saw my co-pilot who was chatting with me just now struggling and bouncing on his seat like a wooden puppet, blood splashing all over half of the cockpit. His colleagues didn't care about him at all, doing their best to push down the nose of the plane.

  We were engulfed in clouds, I watched as the Zero soared upwards and broke through the clouds, it didn't intend to do a futile search of the vast ocean. All I could see was the endless white outside the cockpit, we descended at an almost plummeting speed.

  The Japanese planes have gone, anyway today we are still such defenseless targets.

  "As I fell through the clouds, I wondered if the person who put us on the plane would help me send out my will. Later, when I saw the ground, I thought, although I can speak English, this is my first time abroad."

  From the clouds to the fog, there was almost no change, but in the fog, there was a ground, and the jungle came immediately, in a shock that threw us all over the place, the pilot completed a suicidal landing, the glass of the driver's window shattered in front of him, that old brother fell back and didn't move again, it seemed to me that he was badly injured, no need for him anymore, now this plane has become an inert body, how many people can survive below is up to God.

  The plane careened through violent turbulence, each jolt threatening to rattle our teeth loose. I clung desperately to a fixed point, listening to the sound of landing gear snapping off and metal skin being torn open like paper.

  It finally came to a stop, and the cargo hold was silent. I raised my head and pulled on one of my colleagues beside me, but he didn't respond at all - I looked up to see that the cargo hold had been torn apart by branches from the jungle, and he had been squeezed to death by a tree branch that had pierced the hold.

  Then I remembered what was the most frightening thing in my theoretical knowledge after a plane crash. I got up dizzily and crawled to the ground, "It's going to catch fire! Jump down! Get off the plane!"

  Kang Ya shouted back at me in a daze: "You'll get yourself killed!"?

  "Do you think you're still in heaven?" I looked around for an exit.

  He glanced at the branches on his head and suddenly started shouting violently, "Jumping plane! Jumping plane! On fire! On fire!"

  The plane was overloaded with over 50 people at the time, and now there are only about 30 people left. I'm really glad to see that our foraging group of people were crowded together and avoided the severely damaged rear cabin, they were basically intact except for some bruises and abrasions. The door couldn't be opened early, but the cargo compartment was torn open with a bigger gap than the door, we jumped out from the gap.

  As we fell from the wreckage of C46 into the bushes, we saw the efforts made by that American. He had wanted to make an emergency landing on the empty ground, but in the thick fog, it was impossible to distinguish the terrain, so at the last moment he chose to use branches and vines to stop the impact, and the plane was stopped at the edge of the forest, with a small section of the broken cockpit exposed at the edge of the forest and the empty ground. We stumbled out of the bushes, dazed and confused, and stared in shock at the wreckage of C46 that had taken us to heaven and back to hell.

  It didn't explode, but we heard the sound of an explosion. We instinctively dodged and then realized that the explosion wasn't from the plane wreckage, but from the fog behind us - it was gunfire and artillery, and a kind of, say, the sound of an ammunition depot being set on fire.

  We stared blankly at the fog behind us, just as we had stared blankly at the fog in front of us, until we heard the engine of an American Willys Jeep. We took a few steps forward and saw a jeep emerge from the fog, driving slowly and steadily towards us, with two equally unhurried British soldiers sitting on it.

  Ah Dai thought politeness was more suitable for such a diplomatic occasion, so he slightly bowed in a Chinese way and said, "Gentlemen."

  But both of them were armed, and suddenly there was a Lee-Enfield rifle and a Sten gun pointed at us.

  "We are friends." I said in English, and I was actually a bit red-faced when I said it, because no matter what, there shouldn't be an army with only underpants, "Chinese Army".

  The gun was put down and the car continued driving forward.

  I chased after them and asked: "We've made an emergency landing! Where are we?"

  The car drove past us and stopped a short distance away, the British people on it looked at us with an indifferent attitude, that kind of indifference was so familiar, not only did they not care, but also didn't show any curiosity - usually we also treat each other with that kind of attitude.

  The Briton said expressionlessly: "Asia ah, could this damn jungle be Europe?"

  I couldn't laugh, and judging from the serious expressions of those few people, they didn't think it was a joke either. Jokes are made with people who are on an equal footing, so they don't make jokes with us - fortunately, their driver thought our gap wasn't so big that we couldn't communicate at all.

  "He said: 'You have landed in the wrong place.'"

  I really wanted to laugh, that kind of laughter but the expression is like a crying face. "I agree. But we are forced down, we were shot down by the Japanese."

  "The airport is eight kilometers in the direction of eleven thirty." He said angrily without hiding his anger, "You always get the place wrong."

  The translator next to me subconsciously looked at his watch, but apparently he could only see his wrist. I knocked his wrist down.

  "I said patiently: 'Respected sir, just one word is needed and you can let a group of lost people know their location.'"

  The respected gentleman drove the car and said coldly: "Look at your map."

  He was so confident that I had to take a look at my only pair of pants to make sure there wasn't a high-probability military map hidden in them, and by the time I looked up, the car was already driving away.

  "How did you figure out that I had the entire warehouse, including the map, on me?" "Where in the hell are we?" I completely forgot about diplomatic protocol.

  The car sped away, and whether you were polite or rude to them was irrelevant. They just threw back a lifeless response: "We're withdrawing."

  "What did they say?"

  I flailed my arms wildly, "Say they're already dead! Don't ask about the trivialities of the living!" I picked up a branch and threw it into the vast fog that had swallowed the car, obviously not hitting anything. All I could do was listen to the distant explosion and maliciously imagine that the two undead men had been hit by stray bullets.

  Hao Shouyi, reminded by me, suddenly jumped up, "Not dead! Ah! He's still alive!"

  He hastily ran towards the wreckage of C46, we followed him in a daze, and when we realized what he was going to do, we rushed ahead of him.

  We pulled the dying American pilot out of the wreckage, alleviating his pain as much as possible because he had treated us equally before. Dr. Hao did his best to rescue him, but unfortunately, it was only some manual first aid.

  The American's bleary eyes finally cleared for a moment, looked at us clustering around him, and then looked at the hazy sky.

  "Go fight, damn it." He said, then died. We were stunned.

  "What is he muttering about?"

  "Damn it, you guys, go fight." I said.

  "Who's he fighting with?"

  I asked Ah Yi: "Who is he going to fight with in the camp?"?

  He looked as if the whole thing had nothing to do with him, which was no wonder, for it took him a long time to remember that he was a platoon leader. He managed to bluff his way through officer candidate school and now put on an air of confidence, "Oh, I've got to find out where we are first. Where the devil are we?"

  I stared at him for several seconds, making Ah Yi feel almost mysterious and unpredictable.

  "Don't force me to say hurtful things again. Hurting others doesn't benefit myself either." I said gritting my teeth.

  Then we fell silent. After a while, Kang Ya scratched his head, "Is there a shovel?"

  It's strange that Kang Ya wants that thing, "Clothes and guns are more important than a shovel. What does he want a shovel for?"

  "Go ahead and bury him!"

  We stared at him because this unselfish suggestion came from none other than Gong Yu, who had always been concerned only with his own needs.

  It's impossible to dig a hole with our hands, so the last thing we can do is lay out more than 20 corpses at the edge of the forest and cover them with branches that have been torn off.

  This advance was more like a rout, and in our ignorance we had lost nearly half. The dead were at peace, the living bewildered. We took Kiang's advice and disposed of the bodies with simple rites, Chinese and Americans alike, doomed to be buried nameless and without identity on foreign soil.

  The busy dragon finished the task and began to try to find a crowbar from the plane. Ah Yi held a self-defense pistol found on the pilot, and I drew a map with him on the ground. Those guys were using iron sheets to disassemble the canvas brought down from the plane, trying to find something to keep warm and shelter themselves.

  The pilot treated us like humans, so we didn't strip him of his clothes. The pistol he left behind was handed over to the highest-ranking officer, A-Te. A-Te and I set up a temporary command post, and we wanted to find the airport 8 kilometers in the direction of eleven thirty, but this was a jungle and mountain range that would get you lost even with a map.

  I scratched my head and he scratched his leg, and it seemed like everything had returned to the usual drowsy nothingness of the shelter.

  A voice came from behind: "Konnichiwa."

  We turned back in astonishment, looking at the Japanese soldier emerging from the fog, holding a Type 38 rifle as long as he was, bowing to us with a smile that was between friendliness and shyness. He must have come out of the thicket, carrying a machete in one hand, his clothes also torn by thorns - we stared at him, we were so surprised that we couldn't breathe.

  "Burmese people, friends. Shan people, Kachin people, friends. British people, Chinese people, American people, enemies."

  None of us could understand Japanese, so we just stared at him blankly, and he obviously couldn't speak Burmese either. He had already assumed that we were Burmese anti-British insurgents, so he bowed again and was about to walk through our midst without any fear, even gesturing for us to make way.

  The Burmese had been anti-British for over a century, and when the Japanese army came shouting liberation into Burma, the Burmese also turned against the Sino-American-British alliance. A few months later they began to resist the Japanese who invaded their territory after Britain.

  "Now our respectable appearance is being taken as that of a friendly force, because it looks like we're hijacking American planes and people who spend years in the jungle don't really love wearing clothes."

  "Your grandma!" With the curse, Mi Long slapped the Japanese man to death with a single slap, then took the rifle from the corpse and hung it on his own shoulder. He began to strip the Japanese soldier's clothes, following the logic that what belongs to one person belongs to everyone, we all went to strip the Japanese soldier's clothes.

  A bullet whizzed over our heads, a bunch of carrion-eaters that we were. We looked up to see another Jap emerging from the jungle. Midge got up to take care of him but instead we saw more than ten Japs still entangled with branches and creepers. The Jap who fired had an evil look on his face - naturally, because we were skinning their scouts alive.

  The Japanese soldiers shouted from afar: "What are you doing?"

  The dragon gun was still on his back, and with a swing of the crowbar, he made an attacking posture. I thought he would risk his life to slap one to death, but as it turned out, he retreated by advancing and ran away with his legs spread apart.

  Kang Ya shouted: "Run!"

  I really wanted to punch him for that sentence, but Mi Long took the lead and Kang Ya chased after him. The crowd had already dispersed like sand, and I could only drag one leg, hoping not to be the last one. Ah Yi looked at me with an extremely surprised expression, then ran ahead of me. When I was about to fall behind as the last one, Hao Shouyi and Bu La each supported one side of me, and we ran along the edge of the forest.

  That one ghostly cry and our simultaneous sprint had completely awakened the Japanese. "Chūgokujin!" (Chinese!) "Shageki!" (Fire!) Such shouts rose up behind us, they started firing, and the last few comrades fell to the ground with a thud. We began to dash diagonally towards the woods.

  The narrow winding path in the forest swayed before my eyes, my legs ached as if they were about to explode, and the cold sweat made my vision blurry. Dr. Hao and Bula beside me were also panting heavily, our physical strength was not up to such a frantic run due to prolonged hunger.

  The three of us suddenly tripped over something, and as I flew out, I knocked myself dizzy. I was picked up by someone, it was A Yi, and at the same time, my blurred vision caught a glimpse of what had tripped me: it was a tofu pancake.

  "What should I do?"

  "You're the captain! What do you think we should do?" I asked him back.

  "You're so long-winded." Ah Yi surprisingly had the nerve to say this.

  I was stunned for a moment, looking at A Yi's absolutely six-god-no-master face. Just now, he got the upper garment of the scout while Mi Long got the pants, neither of which fit. But a man with an upper garment and no pants looked absolutely more ridiculous than being naked from the waist down. And around us, all the people who couldn't run were paralyzed here waiting for my solution, that was almost all of us.

  "I said: 'Run separately. It's the only way.'"