The House That Jack Built by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

And straight down the middle of that hellish inferno, Sid Kaederman was limping his way toward escape. Skeeter plunged in after him, tasting the stink of molten metal on his tongue and in the back of his throat. We could die in here, he realized with a gulp of sudden fear. Every one of us. If Kaederman succeeded in ducking out of sight long enough to go to ground, he could use the darkness and that ear-numbing noise for cover, lay an ambush and pick them off one by one with that silenced pistol of his and nobody’d even hear the bodies hit the floor.

“Split up!” Skeeter shouted above the roar as Kaederman dodged and ducked past startled foundrymen, darting into the maze of miniature canyons. “Try and cut him off before he can get out through a back door—or go to ground and lay in wait someplace nasty! And for God’s sake, be careful around those furnaces and crucibles! Go!”

Tanglewood and Armstrong turned right and jogged warily into the near-blackness. Their shadows flickered and fled into the surrounding darkness as they passed a backdrop of fountaining sparks from another massive pour. Margo followed Skeeter. “Are you all right?” she shouted in his ear. “You’re limping!”

“It’s nothing, just a shallow scratch! Stings a little is all!” He’d suffered worse as a boy, learning to ride in the first place. Skeeter had the big Webley Green out, held at the ready, up near his chest, elbows folded so Kaederman couldn’t knock it out of his hands should he come around a corner where the killer was hiding. Leading with a gun, sticking it out in front of you with locked elbows, was a fast way to disarm yourself and end up seriously dead. Only idiots in the movies—and the idiots who believed them—were stupid enough to lead with a firearm.