“Let me look at that,” Adara said, moving closer to Chavez. “Ah, he was in the Golden Gai. This is making more sense by the minute.”
The Golden Gai, or Golden District, was roughly one large square block in size, bisected by narrow alleys and dozens of even narrower footpaths that cut between minuscule bars and cafés—most of which accommodated no more than seven or eight, and most of those regular patrons. The maze of ramshackle shanties with dim lights burning in the second-floor flats made it the perfect place to get lost. One sign read THE DOOR TO NARNIA; another proclaimed NO ENGLISH HERE!
The team split, with Ryan and Midas approaching the target address from the west while Adara and Ding walked parallel to circle around and come in from the east. Ryan and Midas slowed their pace, doing a little gawking while they gave the other team time to get ahead. American and European tourists roamed the shadowed alleys, staring into the tiny bars like they were visiting a human zoo. Ryan was just about to say something about it when he looked to his right and did a double take. Midas noticed and slowed to get a look himself.
“Is that—”
Jack nudged him forward. “Come on,” he said. “She’s probably working.”
At the split pine counter of a cramped place called the Jazz Bar sat Yukiko Monzaki. She glanced up at Jack when he passed, then just as quickly looked away.
“You think we burned her?” Chavez asked after Ryan filled him in on who they’d seen.
“Our guy doesn’t know what we look like,” Ryan said, still walking. “Or, for that matter, that we’re even after him.”
Two Asian men wearing light-colored golf jackets stepped out of a bar ahead, looked up and down the street, then turned down a small side alley to the left.
Ryan and Midas kept walking.
The sound of a sliding door and then a soft voice came from up the street behind them.
“Jack? What are you doing here?”
Ryan turned to find Yukiko standing in a pool of light beneath a red lantern outside the Jazz Bar.
Half a breath later, the door to the café in the middle of the block slid open and an Asian couple stepped into the street. It was the same door the two men had come out of earlier, between Yuki and Jack now. The man carried a leather satchel over his shoulder and was in the middle of lighting a cigarette. The burst of flame illuminated the face of Vincent Chen.
Ryan gave an involuntary start. Yuki took a half-step forward.
The woman with Chen shot a glance at Yuki and then back at Ryan and Midas before leaning in to whisper something. Chen looked up from his cigarette and hitched up the leather bag, walking toward Ryan. He made it two steps before darting left to disappear between two buildings where the earlier men had gone. The woman was right behind him. Three more men exited the same café before Ryan and Midas could follow. Amanda Salazar came out behind them.
“Chen and Kim Soo coming at you, mid-block,” Midas shouted into his mic. “Two more Asian males ahead of them. Could be together.”
The last man out after Chen attempted to draw a long hunting knife from his belt, but Yuki came up from behind and gave him a brutal chop to the forearm with an expandable baton. He dropped the knife but wheeled on her immediately, still very much in the fight. Amanda screamed like a banshee and ran directly at Midas, clawing at his face. The two men came at Ryan in unison.
It was relatively early and Kabukichō was just waking up, but the few people on the narrow street jumped back, not sure if they should run or pull out their phones and start filming.
Grateful for the darkness, Ryan sidestepped the lead, moving into the entryway of a nearby bar, narrowing the possible angles his opponents had to mount their attack and forcing them to stack, one behind the other. Ryan faded back a hair, drawing that man in close before driving upward with a wicked uppercut, slamming the man’s teeth together with a satisfying crack and setting him up for a quick left hook to the jaw that turned off his lights and left him sprawled on the pavement.
Ryan caught the glint of a blade in the hands of the second attacker, upping the ante. Undaunted by the quick defeat of his partner, this one was surely endowed with cold-steel courage brought on by the knife. He bent forward at the waist and rushed Ryan, shoulders stooped, blade out like a fencer on the offense. Ryan stepped sideways again, feeling the sickening scrape as the knife glanced off a rib. He grabbed a handful of golf jacket, taking advantage of the momentum to help the man run past. The man’s head punched straight through the bar’s flimsy hollow-core inner door, all the way to his shoulders. Blades and multiple opponents left little room for mercy. Ryan brought his elbow down on the back of the man’s neck, crushing his throat against the edge of the door and ending the fight—for this one.
Seeing the mortally wounded man hanging half in, half out by his neck, two Japanese women in the tiny bar screamed and retreated to the far corners of the room.
Ryan moved his arms, chicken-wing-like, to be certain they still worked after the knife wound.
The quick snap, snap of fist to flesh came from Ryan’s right. He turned in time to see Midas lift a screaming Amanda Salazar above his head and slam her to the ground. Blood poured from the big man’s nose, revealing that the snapping sound had been Amanda hitting him and not the other way around. She moaned at his feet, writhing on the asphalt and bleeding from her ear.
Yuki stood over the body of the third man, clutching her expandable baton. She bent quickly and handcuffed him to a standpipe next to the road.
“You okay?” Ryan looked at Yuki.
She nodded.
“I’m fine, brother,” Midas said, hand to his bleeding nose as he started for the alley. “In case you were wondering.”
“Are you armed?” Ryan asked. He hadn’t told them about his ribs, and hesitated to look down.
She nodded, producing a stainless SIG Sauer P230. “You?”
Ryan glanced down at the man he’d knocked out and saw a small revolver in an ankle holster. He stooped and picked it up. “I am now,” he said.
Yuki stepped in close, touching his side. “You are bleeding.”
“I’m fine,” Ryan said, rolling his shoulders. “Really.”
Lightning rent the sky above Tokyo, followed by a crack of thunder. The wind shifted abruptly to the north.
Adara’s voice came on the radio, garbled and unintelligible. Ding shouted something next, on the net, but loud enough to hear from the next alley over.
The skies opened up, and it began to rain. More thunder echoed through the narrow streets. No, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t thunder at all, but the flat crack of gunfire.
57