that it was impossible to tell where one body ended and the next began. The mere sight of them made Mariko throw up.
The taste of vomit was no better than the taste of halon. Mariko had the absurd thought that she could really use a drink of water to wash her mouth out. She dismissed it, ashamed of her selfishness. The ringing in her ears had subsided somewhat, and now she could hear someone screaming for help.
Mariko headed in that direction. More than once she tripped over the scattered debris. She’d left the apartment in her dress uniform this morning, nervous about her appointment with Captain Kusama but certain that she’d make her best first impression if she showed up in her Class A’s. Now her jacket was torn, her slacks were bloodstained, and she hadn’t the faintest idea what had become of her cap. In this environment her polished leather oxfords were about as useful as a pair of stilts.
She didn’t dare go barefoot—too much broken glass for that—but she had half a mind to go rooting through all the scattered suitcases until she found a more rugged pair of shoes. Was that an absurd thought too? Or was she finally thinking practically? She couldn’t say for sure.
At last she found the person who was yelling for help. He was pinned under the tangled remains of what used to be a clock tower of sorts. It was a decorative metal frame six meters high, with a clock and a big sign on top indicating the location of the security gate. The car bomb had taken out the base of the tower, and now the top half lay across the back of a man barely old enough to drink. He was on all fours, muscles quivering as they strained against the weight of the sculpture. A little girl huddled under him as if her father was her turtle shell.
The man looked up at Mariko with terror-stricken bloodshot eyes. Tears striped his cheeks. “I can get out. I can get out, but I can’t—I can’t—”
“You can’t get your daughter out with you,” Mariko said. “It’s okay. I’ve got her.”
Mariko pulled the girl out from under him, and once it was clear the man could slide himself free of the wreckage, she congratulated the girl for not leaving her daddy alone when he was in danger. “You two get out of here now,” she said. “If you see anyone on the way, tell them to get clear of the building too.”
The only intelligent thing to do was to follow those two outside, and then put as much distance as possible between herself and the terminal. Mariko knew Joko Daishi’s mind. A third bomb was exactly his style. But the only reason she knew his mind was that she hadn’t put a bullet through it when she had the chance. Now a lot of people were dead and a lot more were injured, all because Mariko didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger. If there was a third bomb, she was damn sure she’d get as many people clear of the blast as possible.
She watched these two go and saw a couple of cops on the street waving them to hurry outside. Once the man and his daughter were clear, the cops kept on waving. Finally Mariko got it through her thick skull that they were waving at her. It was as she suspected: everyone was worried about the possibility of another explosion.
She could see them shouting but couldn’t make out the words over the ringing in her ears. Their body language was clear enough, but Mariko put a hand to one ear and shook her head, pretending she didn’t understand them. Then she went deeper into the destruction, looking for anyone she could help—looking, in fact, for any way to ease her aching conscience.
4
An airport terminal was mostly wide-open spaces, but the relief effort ate them up one by one. Now there were rubble fields and there were places commandeered to serve some other function. The whole north side of the terminal had become a makeshift morgue. The body bags hadn’t come yet. Unwilling to leave the dead simply lying in the dust, someone had scrounged up a few boxes of little fleece blankets, the ones the airlines gave passengers for free. Now the north end was pixelated with rectangles of red and blue, much too cheery for the gruesome reality they concealed.
Mariko hadn’t been up that way in hours. There