Free The Secret of Excalibur by Andy McDermott Page A

quickly.
    The Jaguar roared into the Square, smashing several chairs outside the café before ploughing into a cart and sending brightly coloured pashminas spinning into the air like butterflies. The market stalls formed a channel through the plaza, limiting options for escape. Somewhere in the distance, Chase heard a siren - the police.
    The woman heard it too, and started hunting for an exit route. All were clogged with people trying to flee the cars. Chase increased speed, intending to swipe the Jag’s rear end and force it into a lamppost. ‘Hang on!’
    She saw him coming and floored the accelerator, swinging right - and sending the Jaguar headlong through a fruit stall, an explosion of colour erupting in its wake. ‘Oh, fff . . . ruit!’ Chase gasped as he pursued it through the demolished stall, more varieties than he could name bouncing and splattering on the windscreen. Through the mush he saw the XK turn again, clipping a bus shelter and blowing out a pane of glass before flying off the kerb on to a road.
    He sent the Focus after it, the suspension bottoming out with a horrible crunch. Finding the wiper controls, Chase managed to clear his view and saw he was on the road running round the park. The Jaguar was already racing away.
    The siren suddenly became much louder. A police car, a Volvo V70 emblazoned with squares of Day-Glo yellow and blue, tore round the corner ahead of them, headlights flashing. The orange-haired woman changed direction, slamming over the kerb to drive the Jaguar into the park. Chase followed, another bone-jarring impact crashing through the tortured Focus.
    ‘The police are here!’ Nina protested. ‘Let them handle it!’
    ‘You know who they’ll arrest first? Us! ’ Chase shot back. The police car fell in behind them, strobe lights pulsing - and the Grand Cherokee swept through the park entrance right behind it.
    The narrow path forked. The left route headed through the trees along the park’s eastern side, but the Jaguar went right, towards a bridge over the river. It was barely wide enough for a car, the XK losing one of its wing mirrors to the metal railings. A man jogging across in the other direction stared in disbelief as the Jag roared at him, coming to his senses just in time to fling himself into the water.
    Sparks flew up from the Focus’s flank as it scraped against the bridge, the remaining wing mirror going the same way as the Jag’s. The XK reached a crossroads, the path directly ahead blocked by an ice-cream van, to the right only the balloon and the way back to the crowds of the Square. It went left, towards the seafront—
    Shots!
    Three, four, five cracks from behind. But the shaven-headed man in the SUV wasn’t aiming at Chase, but at the police, trying to get them out of his way.
    Blood splattered the Volvo’s windscreen as the driver was hit. The V70 veered sharply, hitting the bridge railings sidelong so hard that it folded around them, all the windows exploding. The Grand Cherokee’s driver saw that his path was blocked and slammed on the brakes, but not fast enough to stop the SUV from T-boning the police car and crushing it even harder against the metal posts.
    The Jeep wasn’t out of the pursuit, though. Tyres smoking, broken chunks of grille and bumper trailing beneath it, it shrieked in reverse back up the hill before reaching the fork and lunging along the tree-lined path.
    Chase performed a powerslide through the crossroads to follow the Jaguar. More people hurled themselves away from the cars, tumbling on to the neatly mowed grass. A crazy golf course whipped past, trees and another fork in the path ahead—
    ‘Go right!’ Nan ordered.
    ‘What?’ The Jaguar went left.
    ‘Right, it’s shorter!’
    Hoping his grandmother’s local knowledge was up to scratch, Chase swerved the Focus on to the right-hand path, one hand pounding on the horn. He glanced left, seeing glints of black through the bushes and trees.
    And further back, the Grand