Ripping Time by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

More deafening gunfire erupted from right beside her. Then Armstrong snatched her off balance and snarled, “Run, goddamn you!” The next instant, they were pelting down an alleyway littered with at least three grotesquely dead men. All three were dressed like middle-easterners, wearing a type of headdress made popular during the late twentieth century by a famous terrorist turned politician, Jenna couldn’t recall the name through numb shock. The detective swore savagely, stooped and snatched up guns from dead hands. “It figures! They showed up as Ansar Majlis!” Armstrong thrust one salvaged gun into a pocket, shoved the other two into Jenna’s shocked hands with a steel-eyed glance. “Don’t drop them! If I tell you to shoot, do it!”

Jenna stared stupidly at the guns. She’d used guns before, Carl’s black-powder pistols, which he carried in action-shooting re-enactments, the ones stored in her bank box along with their time-touring tickets and the diamond ring she didn’t dare wear publicly yet, and she’d fired a few stage-prop guns loaded with blanks. The guns Noah Armstrong shoved into her hands were modern, sleek, terrifying. Their last owners had tried to kill her. Jenna’s hands shook violently. From the direction of Forty-Second Street, sirens began to scream.

“Come on, kid! Go into shock later!”

Armstrong jerked her into motion once more. She literally fell off her high-heeled shoes, managed to kick them off as she stumbled after Armstrong. They pelted down the alleyway and emerged into heavy traffic. Armstrong ran right in front of a yellow taxicab. The car screeched to a halt, driver cursing in a blistering tongue that was not English. Armstrong yanked open the driver’s door and bodily tossed the cabby onto the street.