“Right. Because this situation definitely needs a lot more guns.”
“Exactly,” she said with a laugh. It was nice to be back to their old repartee. “Hey, at least these guns will be on our side, neh?”
“If they get there in time. That’s a major if, Mariko. I already have plenty of SWAT guys giving me funny looks about the last call. Car thirteen oh four, start looking on the north end, it’s the one with the suspect padlocked to it. Remember that?”
“Then do it through Sakakibara. Just make it happen. We’ll be there any minute.”
50
Makoto looked on the faces of the sleeping children and his heart swelled with pride. Their sacrifice was so small in comparison to the truth they would illuminate.
These ones slept in a classroom, drowsing dreamlessly under the effects of a sleeping draft Makoto had developed himself. It was one of many concoctions he’d created for the Wind, some lethal, some not, back when he was still trapped in their clutches. In those days he did not liberate, he merely killed. Today he was glad to have put the Wind’s murderous ways behind him.
He looked in on the next classroom, and was comforted to see dozens of little ones sleeping softly. The deluded soul saw children as the heirs of the future. The truth was that there was no future. There was only the now. Deluded people might fear what the future held in store, or eagerly await it, or be in doubt about it, but fear, anticipation, and doubt existed only in the now. To embrace that was to be liberated from all of them. What a simple thing it was to die, and what a monumental thing to deliver freedom from dread and doubt! The thought of such a noble transformation almost brought Makoto to tears.
Pain speared him in the temples. Any swift change to his emotional state, anything that induced a change in his pulse rate, stabbed sharp icicles through his skull. He’d suffered the headaches ever since the harlot shot his father and took him away. They were not as acute as they had been a week earlier, but they were not pleasant. Makoto had faith that his father could dispel the headaches, if only they could be together again. Until then, he had his chi gung to control the pain.
If only his father could be here, to witness the Divine Wind’s finest hour. This was his father’s vision, greater and grander than any of Makoto’s aspirations. So tragic that they could not realize that vision together.
“Daishi-sama,” a voice called behind him. “A message for you.”
He turned to see one of his disciples, a loathsome man with a scar across his left cheek. Makoto would not have called upon him for this sacred day if he’d had any other choice. Sending all of these children to the Purging Fire was a monumental task, and he needed every pair of hands he could muster. That included this disciple, who first drew Makoto’s ire in the earliest days of planning this sermon. When Makoto nominated the airport as the newest church, this man had the temerity to suggest that the baggage handling system was perfectly suited for moving hundreds of child-sized corpses. “They are heralds of the truth,” Makoto had said. “Divine servants of the Purging Fire. They shall be held in the highest honor, not tossed aside like so much luggage.” Then he’d backhanded the man, breaking a tooth and leaving that scar under his left eye.
The disciple was graceless then and he was graceless now. “A message,” Makoto said. He kept his voice low, so as not to disturb the children. “Now? On the eve of my most important sermon? Use your head, child, and mind your tongue. This is the hour for listening, not speaking.”
“It concerns your mask, Daishi-sama.”
Makoto brightened at that. “Where is this messenger?”
The loathsome disciple kneeled, pulled a cell phone from his pocket, and presented it with both hands, holding it as high as he could manage while also bowing his head.
Makoto took the phone. “Yes?”
“Furukawa is moving the mask and the sword,” said the voice on the other end. “They are no longer in the woman’s apartment.”
“Moving? Why?”
“He fears you are likely to come for them. He says you are more active now than you have ever been—his words exactly—and next you will take back what is yours. Since you know where it is now, he