“Once this door opens,” Quinn said, “we can’t slow down. Stay close, but not too close.”
The rain had abated some, falling now in a light mist. Ayako took a deep breath, amazingly calm for what they were about to do.
“Sato would have Miyu downstairs where he could keep her quiet,” she said. “They will surely send up an alarm as we pass through the noodle shop.”
Quinn nodded. “That is why we have to be fast. Your job is to go straight to your niece and protect her. I’ll take care of the others. Got that?”
“Got it,” Ayako said, her hand pausing at the door. Helmet and goggles abandoned with the bike, her round face shone with the rain. Wet hair clung to her skin. “I counted six plus Sato. That is a great many people to fight your way through.”
“It is.” Quinn nodded.
If there was a positive side of fighting a large group of people, it was that they tended to be overconfident. The younger, less experienced ones relied on others to look for threats, while the older hands focused on training their juniors rather than looking outbound as they should.
Pig Face, the man who had been closest to Sato at the fights, would be a different story. There was a reason a man like Sato had survived as long as he had — and Pig Face was in all likelihood that reason. Quinn would fight his way to that one. Incapacitate him and the rest would fall in place, particularly Sato.
“I need Sato alive,” Quinn said as Ayako began to slide the door open.
“For a time,” she whispered.
A bell tinkled as Quinn stepped through the door and shouldered his way past a set of hanging curtains. The sea-salt smell of warm fish stock and boiled noodles hung heavy on the humid air. A bald man wearing a white apron shouted the traditional Japanese greeting of “irashaimase!” Please come in!
The two youngsters in tracksuits stood behind a long, waist-high wooden counter talking to the man in the apron. Trays in hand, they were getting Sato his dinner. Quinn vaulted the counter, hitting the nearest kid in the nose as he moved past. The kid yowled as an entire bowl of steaming noodle soup spilled onto his chest.
The second kid dropped his tray and went for a butcher knife on the counter. His strategy was good but his tactics were slow, and Quinn was able to trap his wrist before he could bring the knife into play.
Quinn had decided before he went in that there would be no talking to anyone but Sato. The overwhelming odds of seven against one made no room for error — or compassion.
He turned the boy’s wrist back on itself, snapping the bones and allowing him to grab the blade before it fell. Quinn’s attack was brutal, striking the young gangster repeatedly with the knife in the chest and neck, then letting him fall as he turned on his partner.
Half blinded by the pain from a bath in scalding soup, the other man didn’t notice Quinn had focused on him until it was too late.
Both men lay dead on the kitchen floor half a heartbeat later, their bodies facedown in a bloody mixture of noodle soup and gore. Quinn looked up at the cook and put a finger to his lips.
“Shhh,” he spoke in Japanese. “I will not waste words on men who would keep an innocent girl prisoner for someone else to rape.” He turned the knife so the long blade glinted in the stark light of the kitchen. “Are you such a man?”
The cook shook his head, lips clenched into a tight line. “No, no… I am but a noodle cook.”
“Where is Sato,” Quinn hissed, still turning the blade.
The cook glanced toward the back of the restaurant. “Downstairs.” He gulped. “There are four others with him.”
“And the girl?”
The cook clenched his eyes together, bowing his head. “Yes,” he whispered, gulping as if he knew the information would get him killed. “She is down there as well, in a small bedroom directly under the kitchen.” He blinked tearful eyes. “Please, show mercy, I beg you. Sato is a violent man. He makes me pay him a percentage of my income for the privilege of having him do business in my shop.”
“Leave,” Quinn hissed in guttural Japanese. “Leave now and don’t look back.”
The addled cook was moving before Quinn finished the sentence. He left the sliding door open, exposing the curtains to a torrent of wind and rain.
Ayako stood at the counter, staring down at the two dead teenagers on the floor. “They were bad boys,” she whispered. “And would have grown into evil men.”
Neither of the dead had a gun, so Quinn kept the butcher knife.
“You would go against four of Sato’s men with a kitchen blade?” Ayako gave a smiling nod of approval. “Emiko told me you were such a man.”
“It does the job.” Quinn shrugged as he made his way to the back of the restaurant. “Remember, your job is to find Miyu.”
The stairs leading down to the basement were made of dark, well-worn wood and likely dated back to before World War II. Quinn moved down them with purpose, knowing the creaking steps would take away any chance at surprise.
Years of hunting animals in Alaska had taught him that tentative movement drew attention to itself. Sato and, more important, Pig Face expected the two underlings to bring down noodle soup at any moment. Although they were sure to look up at the approach, they were not likely to arm themselves right away.
An impatient voice came from around the corner as the last stair creaked under Quinn’s weight. “Hurry up, you two,” the voice snapped, growing closer. It was low, as one might speak to a dog. “The boss is getting impatient—”
Quinn met one of the twins with the point of the butcher knife, driving it deep into the V of his collarbone at the base of the windpipe. He stepped past as the sputtering man sank to his knees. Unable to cry out or do anything more than gurgle, the man’s fingers clutched his neck, vainly trying to stanch the spray of blood.
The second twin drew his pistol and did enough shouting for himself and his downed partner. Quinn caught a flash of movement in the corner of his eye. He turned a fraction of a second too late to stop the crashing blow of a glass beer mug as it impacted the back of his head.
Stunned and reeling, he let the knife slip from his hand. He staggered forward, knowing he had to close the distance before the second twin brought the pistol into play. He hit the man with all his force, driving him backward and grabbing the wrist that held the pistol.
Someone hit him again, this time low in the kidney with a series of potent fists that sent waves of nausea through his gut and took him to his knees. The twin with the pistol wrenched away, cursing from nerves and disgust. Strong hands grabbed Quinn by either arm, hauling him to the desk where Sato sat smugly watching the encounter as if he was used to such things happening virtually in his lap. A trembling girl cowered on a cushion behind him, eyes red from nonstop crying. She wore a T-shirt and cutoff jeans, likely the same clothes she’d been wearing at the time she was abducted.
A fist thudded into Quinn’s kidney again to get his attention. Unseen hands bent him forward to rub his face against the desk as if trying to smear him into the polished wood. Quinn swallowed hard, trying not to vomit from the excruciating pain in his back.
“Who are you?” Sato said. An air of smug superiority hung over him like a dark cloud. “And more importantly, where are my noodles?”
The man to Quinn’s right cackled with laughter at his boss’s joke. This must have been the groveling Watanabe whom Ayako had told him about.
Sato gave him an amused grin.
“Really now. Who are you?” He nodded toward Ayako. The surviving twin had both her arms pulled behind her back. “You are with the whore, so I must suppose you have come for my young prize.” He wagged a bony finger back and forth. “An unwise move, I can assure you…”