the TMPD’s best bet against that gate guard. Much safer than a fully armed tac team, she figured. Cops weren’t military; they weren’t allowed to shoot just because a suspect raised a radio to his mouth. Joko Daishi had trained his people with code phrases; surely they’d have one that meant “kill the hostages.” Mariko had seen his handiwork at the house in Kamakura. Pull one lever and the death chamber flooded with hydrogen cyanide gas. There was no reason he couldn’t rig a train car the same way.
It took her a long time to find car 1304. The cars were linked together in huge parallel lines, five or six rows deep, each one hundreds of meters long. Boxcars, mostly, but there were passenger cars and tankers too. She had assumed 1304 would be in the middle of the middle, well out of public view, but it wasn’t. It was close to the end—hiding in plain sight—one of a string of rust-brown boxcars that had all seen their day. The cars could have been identical octuplets, and unlike the rest of the cars on this end of the rail yard, they were coupled to a locomotive. It rumbled restively, a massive noise compared to the wimpy electric purring of Mariko’s cart.
She overshot 1304 the first time, and a guard had to whistle at her to draw her back. Like the last one, he was dressed as a JR worker. No, Mariko thought—they are JR workers. Cultists have day jobs too. And Joko Daishi needed insiders, people who wouldn’t seem out of place if they were seen here day after day. An operation of this scale hinged on having the right people in all the right places. It was just the Wind’s style to put sleeper agents in key positions months before they were needed. Mariko figured the Divine Wind followed suit.
She stopped the little cart and twisted around to face the man waving her toward car 1304. “Where’s everyone else?” she asked.
“At the new church, with the first ones.”
First ones? Was that a religious term, like Daishi or Purging Fire? Furukawa would probably know. Mariko cursed herself for not asking; she should have demanded a full briefing on the Divine Wind. Whoever the first ones were, it was a bad sign that they’d left only one man behind. This guy couldn’t manage hundreds of children by himself—not live ones, anyway. And there was no noise coming from within the car.
She wanted to break into a run, to rip the huge sliding door aside and look inside the boxcar. She had to press her body into the seat just to keep herself inside the cart. She wheeled around and came to a stop at the foot of the cultist, who stood on a little platform above the couplers.
“I can’t believe they left you here alone with all the kids.”
The cultist shrugged. “These ones aren’t going anywhere. And Daishi-sama needs as many as possible to help with the purification.”
First ones. New church. Purification. All of it sounded ominous. At least he’d done one favor: he’d confirmed that he was alone out here. “I want to look inside,” she said.
“Not a good idea.”
Why? Because opening the door would release a cloud of cyanide? Mariko sniffed but couldn’t smell anything out of the ordinary. Did that mean anything? A boxcar wasn’t airtight, but what if the kids had been gassed with something odorless?
“Good idea or not, I’m looking.” A quick glance at the space between the cars confirmed what she expected to see: no doors there. A rusty ladder ran up to the top of the car, but Mariko didn’t expect to find openings up there either. The point of a boxcar was to protect its cargo, not to give curious detectives easy access. She looked at the big sliding doors and saw they were padlocked. “Give me the key.”
“No,” he said.
So you do have the key. She thought it was quite gentlemanly of him to confirm this for her before she drew the Pikachu.
It was still in its cigarette case, so for him the first sign of trouble only came when Mariko hooked the back of his heel with her free hand. He had the high ground, so she had to reach up to hit him in the inner thigh. With his heel hooked, the Pikachu worked just like a takedown. It slammed him to the metal platform, knocking him cold as soon as his head made impact.