“Keep going,” Kurt said.
Emma kicked off her shoes, reached for the edge of the low-slung roof and pulled herself up without needing any help. Kurt came up beside her.
“Get to the front. Look for a cab,” he said.
“What are you going to do?”
“A holding action.”
She left Kurt and sprinted up toward the peak of the building, staying low in case the Chinese agents started shooting.
Kurt lay flat on the roof and waited for their pursuers to arrive. The loud metallic banging of someone climbing on the dumpster came a few seconds later. Hands appeared on the edge of the rooftop, and then a face, as one of the Chinese men pulled himself up.
Kurt thrust a foot forward, slamming his heel into the man’s face. Blood spurted from a shattered nose and the man’s head jerked back. He fell, taking his partner to the ground in the process.
Without waiting for a rematch, Kurt turned and raced up toward the top of the roof and went over the other side. Emma was crouching there, waiting for him.
“I don’t see any cabs,” she said.
“A little late to call Uber.”
They jumped down together, landing solidly on the deserted front walk. Almost immediately, the trio of men who’d been at the far end of the alley came racing back out onto the main boulevard and sprinted toward them.
“Go,” Kurt yelled.
They ran across the street and this time several shots came their way. No loud concussions, just soft pops from well-suppressed handguns, the impacts marked by a sudden shattering of car windows parked on the far side of the road.
Kurt dove across the hood of a classic BMW 2002 and took cover as the well-preserved machine took the brunt of a minor onslaught.
At the sound of the shooting, the few people still out on the street raced for cover.
“I thought you said they wouldn’t shoot us?” Emma asked.
“It must be plan B: Target elimination.”
To see without exposing himself to a well-placed shot, Kurt ripped the mirror off the side of the car. “Sacrilege,” he whispered as he vandalized one of his favorite old machines.
Using the mirror as a periscope, he said, “They’re surrounding us again.”
“Can you hot-wire a car?”
“Not in the blink of an eye,” Kurt said. “Especially with people shooting at me.”
He looked down the street. A pair of buses idled at a quiet stop beside the next intersection. “How to feel about public transportation?”
“It’ll do in a pinch.”
“Let’s see if we can make the crosstown express,” Kurt said.
They darted from the cover of the old BMW, cut diagonally across the lawn of a small church and ran toward the idling buses.
“Yuck,” Emma gasped as she ran.
“What?” Kurt said.
“Wet grass, bare feet.”
At least she didn’t slow down.