Papers from books and offices had been lofted high by the blast. They were just now beginning to return to earth. Many of them were just fragments, most were singed, some were ash. A few of the more delicate pages looked like they had belonged to prayer books. Perhaps they had been part of the Sanskrit text the pilgrim had been studying just minutes before.

The gray cloud reached Friday and engulfed him. Nine or ten feet high, it carried the distinctive, noxious smell of burning rubber. Beneath that smell was a sweeter, less choking odor. The stench of charred human flesh and bone. Friday drew a handkerchief from his pocket and held it over his nose and mouth. Then he turned away from the stinging cloud.

Behind him the bazaar was still. People had flung themselves to the ground not knowing what might explode next. They were lying under stalls or behind wheelbarrows and carts. As his ears began to clear Friday could hear sobbing, prayer, and moans.

Friday turned back toward the remains of the temple and the police station. The drizzle was helping to thin the cloud of smoke and douse the few fires that had been ignited. No longer light-headed, he began walking toward the rubble. He just now noticed that the police officers who had been standing outside were dead. The backs of their uniforms were bloodied, peppered with shrapnel. Whatever did this had been a concussive device rather than incendiary.

It was strange. Besides the bus, there appeared to be two blast ways the fanlike spray debris followed from the epicenter of an explosion.

One line led from the front of the police station. The other led from deep inside the temple.

Friday could not understand why there had been two separate explosions on this site. It was unusual enough for two religious targets to be bombed, a temple and a busload of pilgrims.

Why was the police station attacked as well?

Sirens cut through the cottony quiet as police who had been on patrol began to arrive. Other officers, who had been out on foot, began to run toward the toppled buildings. People began to get up and leave the bazaar proper. They did not want to be here if there were more explosions. Only a few people headed toward the rubble to see if they might be able to help pull out any survivors.

Ron Friday was not one of those people.

He started walking back toward the inn where he was staying.

He wanted to get in touch with his contacts in India and Washington.

Learn if they had any intel on what had just happened.

There was a sound like bowling pins falling. Friday looked back just as one of the surviving back walls of the temple crashed onto the rubble.

Thick balls of dust swirled from the new wreckage, causing people to step back. After the blocks stopped tumbling, people started moving forward again.