Outside was bright sunlight and air that stank of diesel fumes and movement in the street. Chapel forced himself to focus, to see what was going on. A car was roaring up the street toward him, a black sedan full of men in suits. Most of them were blond.
Not that way, then. He turned to look down the street—
And saw an almost identical car coming from that direction.
“There,” Nadia said, pointing across the street. She started running again, and Chapel headed after her. The far side of the street was one long stretch of gray-yellow architecture, columns and windows and doorways but strangely no signs or glass storefronts. The building there must have been standing since before the big construction boom. Chapel saw one doorway lit up by sunlight in a way that seemed wrong, as if the sun were coming from behind the door. Nadia raced through it and disappeared. Chapel hurtled after her, having no idea if he was about to slam into a piece of plateglass or a locked door or what.
Instead, he found himself emerging into a vast open pit of reddish dirt topped by blue sky. He glanced around and saw that the building he’d passed through was nothing but a façade, a thin veneer of bricks that must have once been the front wall of a palatial building. Now it was just a free-standing wall, held up by wooden props, a mask to hide the giant construction site beyond.
Ahead of him he saw the base of a multistory crane, a couple of green construction vehicles, a row of portable toilets. The far side of the lot was dominated by a massive pile of tailings and broken bricks, whatever remained of the demolished building. Thick sections of pipe, each a yard wide, were stacked in a pyramid near the far wall.
Behind him he heard shouting and knew that the blonds were in hot pursuit. He raced after Nadia, only to collide with her as she stopped and turned to look back as well. She put one arm across Chapel’s chest to hold him back and shouted, “Get down!”
Chapel knew an order when he heard it. He dropped to a crouch and she leaned over his back, firing her pistol three times at the doorway they’d come through. Chapel twisted his head around and saw plumes of dust lift from the back of the façade, her three shots catching the empty door frame. He thought he saw someone peering through the doorway, but if he did, they were smart enough to pull back, out of view.
“I’m a crap shot,” Nadia told him. “You want this?”
He grabbed the pistol out of her hand. Slipped on the safety and shoved it in his pocket. “A shootout back here is the wrong play,” he told her, keeping his eyes on the doorway. Nobody was dumb enough to show themselves there. “If we kill someone here, even in self-defense, there’s no way we get out of Romania with the mission intact.”
“Konyechno,” she said.
“We have to move,” he told her. He straightened up and ran toward the back of the lot, hoping there would be some exit back there. There was, but it was useless. A big gate large enough to drive a truck through, chain link twenty feet high and topped with razor wire. It was also locked up tight with a massive padlock. No way he could break through there. It seemed the only way in or out of the lot was through the empty doorway back on the Strada Lipscani. Back where the entire blond suit gang was gathered, waiting for them to show themselves.
They could try to hide — but to what point? The blonds would just come into the lot and search for them, and even if Chapel was willing to shoot his way out, he would run out of bullets before they ran out of men.
“Come on,” Nadia told him, grabbing at his hand.
Well, she was the lead on this operation. He followed her as she ran toward the green construction vehicles. He ran faster when a bullet tore up the red dirt near his feet.
Apparently the suits had grown tired of waiting.
“Cover me,” Nadia called.
Chapel spun around until he was running backward — dangerous over the broken ground of the construction pit, but at least it meant he was facing the doorway. He saw a flash of blond hair and snapped off a shot that hit the base of the doorway. The blond hair disappeared again.
Behind him he heard electrical sparks jumping and then the growl of a heavy-duty diesel engine. He glanced back over his shoulder.
“Get on,” Nadia said.
She had hot-wired one of the construction vehicles, a miniature bulldozer. Chapel ran over and jumped onto the back of the thing, sitting down on its propane fuel tank and holding on to the roll cage. He fired another shot back at the doorway, barely even aiming, just to keep the men at bay.
With a lurch and a roar the bulldozer started forward, its blade coming up in front until Chapel doubted that Nadia could even see where she was going. She punched the throttle and he was nearly thrown clear, but he managed to hang on as she rolled toward the stack of giant pipes against the far wall of the lot.
“Wait, Nadia—” he had time to shout. If she heard him, she didn’t show any sign. She definitely didn’t slow down.
The dozer’s blade crashed into the pipes, the impact nearly throwing Chapel off. He did drop the gun, though he managed to grab it before he lost it completely. The pipes rang like bells and grated together.
Nadia threw the machine into reverse, backed up, and rammed the pipes again.
The pipes were held together in their stack by a thick plastic strap. It snapped with the second impact, and suddenly nothing was holding them back. They rattled and crashed together, rolling over one another, right into the gate. The gate wobbled and twisted under its own weight and started to open.
A coil of razor wire at the top of the gate came loose, then, and started to unravel and fall. Chapel looked up and saw one end come spearing toward him, the head of a silver snake striking right at his face. He rolled over to one side as the wire slashed down across his jacket sleeve, one barb tearing deep into the silicone flesh on his artificial arm.
With a great whoomp of displaced air the gate fell outward, off its posts. It crashed into the street beyond, burying parked cars. Chapel didn’t hear any screams — hopefully there’d been no pedestrians back there.
Nadia didn’t let up on the gas. She rumbled up over the fallen gate and into the street beyond, where horns blared and Chapel heard the distinctive crump of metal colliding with metal. The little bulldozer hit a curb or a buried car or who knew what. It started to turn over, capsizing in slow motion. The two of them just had time to jump clear.
Behind him, the blonds were spilling into the construction lot. A couple of them had guns up and at the ready.
“Come on,” Nadia shouted, and Chapel looked over to see her standing on the roof of a wrecked car parked by the sidewalk. The bulldozer blade was imbedded — nearly fused — with the car’s doors.
The big pipes had kept rolling into the street, knocking aside anything they touched. They had piled up against the row of shops on the far side, smashing windows and decapitating parking meters.
Already a crowd was gathering in the street. Chapel hoped the owners of the wrecked cars and shops weren’t among them. He raced after Nadia as she wove her way between cars stopped in the street, dozens of them crammed into a narrow little lane. Drivers slammed their horns and shook their fists and threw their hands in the air in impotent rage.
“Our enemies will not bring a car through this,” she said, grabbing for Chapel’s hand. “Nor will they dare shoot with so many witnesses.”
That last part sounded like wishful thinking. Chapel let her lead him down the street and around a corner. He couldn’t see their pursuers, but he was sure they were still coming. “This way,” Nadia whispered, and slipped down an alleyway between two buildings. She took a left on the next street, a right on yet another. She came to a flight of stairs and hurried down, nearly jumping onto the landing below.