Free CHERUB: Guardian Angel by Robert Muchamore Page B

couple of the heavier shopping bags over to Ning.
    The cherubs had all been taught that cops have radios and will send more officers in a car to intercept you if you’re daft enough to run in a straight line.
    Max and Alfie took the first escape route, jumping up to grab an iron road bridge crossing the canal, then swinging their bodies over the riveted beams. Chloe and Ning made an easier exit a hundred metres further along, running up an embankment and into an alleyway beside a bus depot.
    This left Ryan and Grace on the canal path. Ryan had moved a good twenty metres ahead of Grace, who was the smallest and slowest. As he rounded a short corner he had the horrible realisation that the footpath only ran on for a couple of hundred metres.
    The only way out was up a grass embankment and over a graffitied brick wall. The wall’s top had been cemented with glass shards to stop people climbing into the recycling depot on the other side.
    ‘Screw it,’ Grace said breathlessly, as she stopped running and spun around, seeking options.
    They couldn’t see any cops, but they could hear boots on the canal path less than a hundred metres away.
    ‘I’ll give you a boost,’ Ryan said.
    He went down on one knee and Grace hopped on to his shoulders as he stood up. Ryan was banking on Grace giving him an arm up, but she jumped straight down the other side.
    ‘Hey!’ Ryan shouted.
    ‘What?’ Grace asked. ‘Can’t you reach the top of the wall?’
    By this time the big black cop was in sight. Ryan made a desperate jump at the wall, but his fingertips didn’t get within thirty centimetres of the top and there was nothing around that he could use as a step.
    ‘Get your hands where I can see ’em,’ the cop shouted.
    Ryan looked about. He’d been kicked off his first mission in disgrace. Attacking a cop might get him kicked out of CHERUB for good, so he decided the best option was to jump into the canal and swim.
    ‘I’m warning you,’ the cop shouted, as Ryan hesitated.
    As the cop ripped something off his belt, Ryan sprinted down the embankment, preparing to jump in. The water was going to be cold and filthy, but he was a strong swimmer and it was his best shot at not getting caught.
    Two steps from the water, Ryan felt an enormous jolt as the cop fired a Taser barb into his thigh. He fell sideways with his body sprawled across the footpath, legs twitching and his head hanging over the water. At the same moment a police siren whooped in a street not too far away.
    ‘I warned you,’ the cop shouted, as he strode purposefully towards Ryan’s shuddering body.
    Ryan was face down, so he didn’t see what happened next, but he did hear an almighty crash, followed by a splash as the cop hit the water.
    When Grace jumped off the wall, she’d found herself balanced on a mound of old kitchen appliances. As the cop pulled his Taser, she’d grabbed a sturdy metal-sided toaster, clambered to the highest point of the mound and used a two-handed overhead throw to lob it at the policeman’s head.
    Ryan’s leg muscles twitched from the Taser blast, but he’d been zapped several times in training and knew that the effects would only be temporary as he pulled the metal barb out through his jeans.
    ‘You OK?’ Grace shouted anxiously, as she balanced on the mound, leaning over the wall. ‘I’ve got a fridge door you can use as a step up.’
    As the cop pulled himself furiously out of the water, there was no sign of his female colleague, who must have broken off to chase Chloe and Ning. Ryan hobbled up the embankment and by the time he reached the wall Grace had grabbed a fridge door and lobbed it over the wall.
    ‘Just you wait!’ the cop roared.
    As the cop came up on to the embankment, dripping filthy canal water and crippled by the weight of soggy body armour and cop equipment, Ryan used the fridge door as a makeshift step, positioning his hand carefully to avoid the jutting glass atop the wall as he swung over into a