dispatch would know right where she was, and given the severity of the situation, by now she probably would have called for a tactical team. As a civilian, she had none of those assets. The safest thing to do—in fact, the only intelligent thing to do—was to dial 110 and wait.
Mariko wasn’t very good at waiting.
Furukawa could fake the dispatch call and get a tac team down here. But he might send assassins instead. Besides, Mariko wanted this to be a win for the TMPD, not the Wind. She called Han.
“Hey,” he said, “what’s up?”
“You said quid pro quo, neh? I’ve got something for you. Shinagawa rail yard, lots of trucks moving in and out all morning. I’m sitting outside a gate looking at about a million tire tracks leading in and out of the yard—”
“And you’d badge your way through it and go snooping around, except you’re not carrying a badge today. Got it. I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
“Call—”
“SWAT,” he said. “I know.”
“I was going to say HRT. Well, SWAT too, but if we’re lucky and this is a hit, it’s really a job for hostage rescue.”
“Good idea. I’m on my way. Oh, and Mariko?”
“Yeah?”
“Ahh, never mind. I was going to tell you to do yourself a favor and don’t go in there. No chance of that, huh?”
“Nope.”
“Then do yourself a different favor: don’t get caught.”
43
Mariko’s method of not getting caught was a little unorthodox. She drove right up to the gate guard and said, “Hey, I’m pretty sure I heard a crying kid back there.”
He looked down at her with an apprehensive look, but not the kind she expected to get. He wasn’t worried about a kid in danger, or how a kid got past him, or how completely screwed he’d be if his boss found out a kid got past him. Mariko would have read any of those easily enough, and she’d have sympathized with all of them. This was different. He seemed more concerned about Mariko than anything else.
Usually flashing a badge sped things along in this sort of situation, but this guy was giving her a different vibe. She leaned in, lowered her voice a bit, and said, “We don’t want anyone hearing those kids, do we?”
“What?”
Uh-oh, Mariko thought. Maybe she’d misread him entirely. But she’d already grabbed the tiger by the tail; the only thing to do was hold on. “What if some random person on the street hears one of the kids? That could ruin everything, neh? So maybe one of us ought to head back there and have a look around.”
His suspicion deepened. “Who are you?”
“Relax,” she said, saying it as much to herself as to him. She’d read him correctly after all. “I’m with you, brother. A servant of the Purging Fire.”
He loosened up, but only for an instant. The two of them spoke the same language; that was what set him at ease. But he had been placed here to carry out his holy errand; the thought of duty strengthened his resolve.
“Say the words,” he said.
Mariko gulped. Her only weapon was her Pikachu, but the cultist was well out of reach. He was armed with a radio. That was all he’d need to contact whoever was watching the children. Mariko was certain this gate guard wasn’t alone. He would have been the one to admit all the trucks, but there had to be someone on the other end to direct them. One quick call and all of those kids were as good as dead—if they weren’t dead already.
“Say the words.” His voice was ice cold. He picked up the radio.
“There is no place the Divine Wind cannot reach?”
Mariko’s breath froze in her lungs. He put the radio to his mouth. “One coming down,” he said. Then, to her, “Car thirteen oh four. You can’t drive that, though. People will see. Take one of the carts.”
She looked in the direction he was pointing, and used the brief moment facing away from him to recover from fright. Her situation wasn’t rosy yet, but at least she’d kept it from going right to hell. She gave the guard a nod, then pulled the BMW into line with the row of little electric carts he’d indicated. They bore Japan Railways logos and they all had keys in the ignition. Mariko hopped in the first one and zipped off into the rail yard.
It occurred to her as she drove along that a lone undercover officer posing as a cultist might actually have been