by Steve Bein
Mariko didn’t know how Tokyo International Airport came to be known simply as Haneda. She’d never actually been there, despite the fact that she’d flown in and out of the city dozens of times. She’d spent much of her childhood in Illinois, and had flown back home to see her grandparents twice a year like clockwork. But all the flights to Chicago originated out of Narita, some sixty kilometers to the northeast, so while Mariko knew Narita like the back of her hand, her first impression of Haneda was as an oily, gritty, bombed-out shell.
The centerpiece of Haneda’s Terminal 2 was a rotunda of shining blue-green glass, an iconic background dressing in any number of movies and TV shows. Now every pane was blown out, leaving only a lattice of steel window frames twisted like chicken wire. It was a gaping wound four stories tall, leaking greasy black smoke into the bright blue sky. The sight of it froze the breath in her lungs. Seeing it made it real. Tears welled in her eyes, and the only reason she forced them back was that she didn’t want Captain Kusama or Lieutenant Sakakibara to know she could be vulnerable.
She’d come in the same patrol car as Kusama and Sakakibara, plus four other officers crammed in cheek by jowl. By the time they arrived, it seemed every squad car in Tokyo was already there. Ambulances too, and fire engines, and private airport security vehicles, all forming a stroboscopic chaos of flickering lights. No one was directing traffic—everyone present had something more important to do—so between the emergency vehicles and the TV news vans, the road labeled DEPARTURES was so congested that Kusama’s squad was frozen like an insect in amber. Mariko couldn’t stand it anymore; she got out of the car and just ran the rest of the way.
As she passed by a news correspondent she overheard the woman confirming the death toll at forty. Perhaps that should have stopped Mariko in her tracks, but it didn’t. There was nothing she could do to help the dead. Somewhere there were people she could help. She was going to find them and help them, and that was all there was to it.
When she finally reached the bomb site, she was surprised by what impressed itself most deeply on her mind. Streaks of blood didn’t register for her—or rather, they did, but they didn’t strike her as out of place. Neither did the miasma of blue diesel smoke that choked her, or the rasping background chatter of walkie-talkies. Those things were normal in her line of work.
No, what drew Mariko’s attention was the abnormal. The thin layer of grit that made every footstep crunch as if on ice-encrusted snow. The bitter film clinging to the roof of her mouth—probably halon from all the exploded fire extinguishers. Here and there she saw something totally incongruous: a shoe, a can of coffee, an itinerary printed from someone’s inkjet printer. These things were completely pristine, though everything around them was in ruins. How had they come to be there? Clearly they weren’t thrown by the blast, or they’d be dusty, burned, blood-spattered, just like everything else. They didn’t fit, yet there they were.
Her senses captured all of these details, but her mind still hadn’t caught up. Her city was under attack. Someone had bombed her city. Her city, and now it wasn’t hers anymore. It was like someone had slashed her face with a knife and now she didn’t recognize herself in the mirror. Everything was familiar, yet everything was different.
She accidentally met the gaze of a wizened old man sitting silently on a suitcase, holding a wadded T-shirt to the side of his head. Blood matted his hair. On any other day, a silver-haired grandfather with a bleeding head wound would have been the sole focus of everyone in sight. Today he was just waiting where someone told him to wait.
Something about him struck Mariko as odd. She stopped where she stood, unwilling to go farther until she sorted it out, because maybe the whatever-it-was would require her attention. As Mariko stood watching him, she saw a grown woman being carried like a child, both of her legs striped with blood. She saw someone lying flat on his back with six people huddled around him—maybe family, maybe strangers. Nine or ten meters beyond him, a small horde of travelers and airline personnel had formed a sort of spontaneous rugby scrum, putting their shoulders into an ambulance whose driver had attempted to cross the terminal lobby, only to set off a fault line in the floor and get his vehicle trapped.
Mariko finally figured out what was so odd: none of these people were bystanders. The crowd that inevitably formed whenever there was a house fire or a downtown car wreck hadn’t formed here. These were average civilians, not gawking but forming teams and getting down to business. That’s what was strange about the old man with the head wound: he was alone, doing his part to aid in the relief work, without a mob of rubberneckers surrounding him. His part wasn’t much; he only had to keep pressure on a wound. But he was doing his part.
Mariko wondered how long she’d been standing there, staring. Only a few seconds. She’d scarcely crossed the threshold into the lobby and already she felt so overwhelmed she feared she might drown. This was so much bigger than anything she’d been trained to handle. But no one had trained any of these civilians either. If they didn’t have time for gawking, neither did she.
She made it two steps into the terminal when the whole world went to hell.
One moment she was on her feet. The next she was airborne, then flat on her back. Her head spun. She couldn’t hear. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t breathe.
It took a few seconds to realize she wasn’t blind. A cloud of white had enveloped her, leaving nothing else for her to see. Mariko smelled smoke and dust and blood. Another explosion. What else could it have been? It had knocked the wind out of her, and now that she was gasping for air it shoved its gritty, smoky fingers down her throat.
For a while she could concentrate on nothing other than getting her breath under control. Mercifully, the cloud began to dissipate almost immediately. By the time Mariko was breathing normally, the smoke had risen, the dust had settled, and she could see again. A ringing still flooded her ears. She felt a constant rumble, and knew instinctively that she should have been able to hear it. She couldn’t. She was deaf but for a high-pitched ringing cloying in her ears. Whatever it was, the rumbling pressed against her back and it was very warm.
Still punch-drunk, she tried to roll herself to her feet. Instead she fell about a meter and landed on her hands and knees. She’d thought she was lying on the ground. Now the world sorted itself out: the explosion had thrown her onto the hood of a squad car. The engine was still running; that explained the warm rumbling she’d felt. It also explained why the back of her head hurt so much: she’d left a skull-sized depression of spider-webbed glass in the squad car’s windshield.
Now that she’d had a chance to register her injuries, everything else in her body spoke up. Her back was a cacophony of pain. Every muscle hurt like hell. The backs of her arms too; she guessed she’d probably performed a breakfall on the hood of the squad. The TMPD’s aikido instructors would reprimand her for forgetting to tuck her chin.
Once she was on her feet the world slowed its spinning. She made her way toward the terminal, staggering across the five-meter expanse of rubble between her and the blown-out doors. Inside, the ambulance was a black, flaming skeleton of its former self. Of the people who had been pushing it, nothing recognizable remained.
A car bomb, she thought. She’d only seen images before, on the news or in gangster movies. Now, standing amid the wreckage, she recognized this for what it was: a double bombing. She’d heard of the tactic—always in some far-flung country, never in Japan, but it made sense in its own warped, sadistic way: the first explosion drew all the first responders and the second one blew them to bits. After that, everyone on-site would have to wonder if a third bomb was about to go off.
Mariko looked for the old man with the head wound. He was dead too, laid out flat and staring at the ceiling. At least he seemed to have died peacefully. Closer to the bomb, victims were hit so hard 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 hal
on. 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 were more important things to do than stand and stare and cry. She’d been assisting paramedics, slinging debris, moving the wounded, and most recently—because she was too damn tired to do anything else—directing supplies. A steady stream of trucks now flowed in from the city, carrying everything from tarps to trauma surgeons. Since all the main roads to the airport were jam-packed, some high-ranking disaster management expert in the Self Defense Force had rerouted everything onto the airstrip and up through the departure/arrival gates. From there it was herding cats. Everything had to get to its proper place and none of it arrived in any logical order. Mariko was one of the cat-herders.
When she saw the boxes marked CORONER GRADE VINYL BAGS, she knew where they had to go. The image of all those red and blue blankets had never fully escaped her. She rolled up in one of those electric airport carts, ready to tell the guys carrying the boxes to hop aboard, and had to brake before running smack into another vehicle. She was surprised to see she recognized the driver.
“Han?”
Mariko hardly recognized her former partner. The electric cart wasn’t his style, but more jarring was the regulation haircut he’d been subjected to when he was reassigned from Narcotics to general patrol. Working undercover had been the only reason he was allowed to grow his hair out and keep his sideburns in the seventies. And of course his hair wasn’t just shorter; it was white now, too, as was Mariko’s—as were their shoulders, the tops of their shoes, and every other horizontal surface in the blown-out terminal. Gypsum, pulverized cement, fire extinguisher propellant, cigarette ashes from the scores of relief workers, all stirred up in a bitter, chalky concatenation that billowed up with every footstep. Mariko couldn’t see it in the air, but it coagulated on her skin as soon as she worked up a sweat. She’d given up trying to wash it off.
Han was wearing the same gritty mask, with a powdered wig to match. Even so, she could see how tired he was. Like hers, his mask was cracked in places. Every time he’d pinched his eyes shut to rub at them, every time he’d frowned or winced, wrinkles had formed, channeling away the sweat and dust and leaving little flesh-colored creases behind. Mariko knew she looked the same: weary and ready to crumble.
“Women drivers,” he said, shaking his head in mock disgust. “Who lost his mind long enough to give you the keys to that thing?”
Mariko couldn’t help but smile. Her white mask crackled in new places, and she realized this was the first time she’d smiled since arriving at Haneda. Not that there had been much cause for mirth.
“You look like hell,” he said. “Wild guess: you haven’t taken a break since you’ve been here, have you?”
“No.”
“You want to grab something to eat? I hear they set up a breakfast buffet in the food court.”
“Breakfast … ?” That didn’t add up. “Han, what time is it?”
“About six.”
“Six in the morning?” Mariko sagged in her seat. “No wonder I’m tired.”
“Come on, let’s eat. Someone else can get these body bags where they need to be. I’ve been avoiding the north end anyway.”
Mariko nodded. She and Han had always thought along similar lines. That was one of the things she liked best about him.
He insisted on driving, not because he had to be the man in their relationship but because she was teetering on the brink of exhaustion. There weren’t many guys in the department who treated her like just another cop, guys who could be friends without also thinking of her as a little sister or a nice piece of ass. Mariko slumped in her padded seat, grateful that she’d crossed paths with him and no one else.
At the food court, Mariko gorged herself on greasy American food, a childhood staple. Prior to that moment, she’d never fully grasped what the Americans meant by “comfort food.” Then the first salty McDonald’s French fry broke crisply between her teeth and something deep inside of her got permission to relax. She gobbled down an entire packet of fries before turning to anything remotely healthy. Han waited until she had a bowlful of rice in her belly before he offered the real delight: a little glass bottle of Chivas Regal. Mariko could have kissed him. “Where’d you get that?”
“Are you kidding? All the airport cops ar
e on disaster detail. Those duty-free shops are wide open for looting.”
“Seriously?” She punched him in the arm. “You could lose your badge for that!”
“Ow!” He laughed at her and rubbed where she’d punched him. “You make it too easy. I got it from a manager of one of the shops. She was just giving them away. Said it was the least she could do.”
“You’re an asshole, you know that?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“And that manager deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. She’s a humanitarian if ever there was one.” Mariko took a swig. It was heaven. “When did you get out here?”
“I came as soon as I heard. Took me three hours. The whole city’s on lockdown.”
“You heard a death toll?”
Han closed his eyes and nodded. “By the time I got here they were saying eighty. Then ninety. Last I heard, maybe an hour ago, it was a hundred and twelve.”
The number hit her like a punch in the mouth. She couldn’t speak. Han’s eyes pinched tight and he pressed a fist to his lips. Mariko could see he was trying not to cry. Apropos of nothing, he said, “Your mom called me.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve still got her in my phone. From when we were partners, just in case—well, you know.”
“Yeah.” Mariko fished her phone out of her pocket. It was a mangled mess, probably crushed when she put her thigh into moving something heavy. She didn’t even remember it happening. “She okay?”
“I guess. Worried sick. Said she heard from you around midnight but not since. I told her you were all right.”
“How about you?”
“Me?” Han sniffled. “Yeah, sure, I’m fine.”
He was lying. Both of them knew it, and both of them knew why. No one was fine. The whole damn city was turned upside down and Mariko felt like she was hanging on by her fingernails. The only way to hold on was to not think about what she was feeling. Han was the same way.
So he changed the subject. “They’re saying two bombs.”