Allah's Scorpion by David Hagberg

Author:David Hagberg [Hagberg, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0765306239
Publisher: Forge Books
Published: 2006-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

FORTY-ONE

CASEY KEY, FLORIDA

McGarvey, dressed only in swimming trunks, a towel around his neck, slowed to a walk, and looked out across the Gulf of Mexico as a V formation of brown pelicans skimmed just above the water, seemingly without effort. His left shoulder, where he’d taken a bullet two weeks ago, was still sore and stiff, but each day of strenuous exercise was bringing him back to the peak of physical fitness.

He’d only spent the one night at the hospital in Bethesda, before he checked himself out and Liz had driven him and Kathleen to their new house on one of the barrier islands just south of Sarasota. The day after they’d arrived, he’d started his exercise regime, pushing his body to its limits. He was now swimming in the Gulf for a solid hour every morning at dawn, and then running five miles barefoot on the beach.

Last week he’d started shooting again at an indoor pistol range off University Parkway up in Sarasota. One of the instructors had tried to convince him to take shooting lessons and to retire the Walther in favor of something with greater stopping power, but after watching McGarvey empty one clip at rapid fire, all the shots hitting within a one-inch circle, he’d walked away, shaking his head.

His physical wounds were healing, but to this point he’d been unable to get the vision of Toni Talarico’s face out of his head, when she and her children came face-to-face with the terrorist McGarvey had pulled out of the van.

He had regained consciousness and was sitting in the backseat of a police cruiser, his hands cuffed behind him.

McGarvey was being given first aid by an EMT ten feet away, when Toni and the kids had been escorted up the hill by Adkins. She’d broken away and walked over to the police cruiser to get a closer look at the man. The expression on her tiny face was of pure hatred: raw, intense, and very personal. There was no doubt in McGarvey’s mind that if someone had handed her a gun at that moment she would have emptied it into the man’s head.

Her children were watching her, and when she turned back to them, they both stepped away and burst into tears. They’d been frightened not by the terrorist, but by the look in their mother’s eyes.

The island was very narrow here, the single road less than one hundred feet from the beach. Across the road, houses were nestled in lush tropical growth: palms, bougainvillea, sea grapes, and dozens of different flowering trees and bushes. The McGarveys’ was a two-story Florida-style, with tall ceilings, large overhangs, and a veranda that wrapped completely around the second floor. When the weather was right the house could be completely opened to catch the slightest breeze off the gulf or off the Intracoastal Waterway.

Kathleen loved the place, and that was enough for him, though they had paid what he considered an obscene price.

Reaching the path up to the road, McGarvey headed to his house, his thoughts still on the attack at Arlington.

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