Strike the Dragon
Charles Dyer and Mark Tobey
Moody, Sep2007, $12.99
ISBN: 9780802439086
In a Palestinian refugee camp in Balata, West bank, the handler tells the widow mother of young Yousef that "It’s time". She knows how he will feel because less than six months ago her husband was murdered a martyr’s death. Now she will deliver in person twenty kilos of explosives and ten kilos of ball bearing to the Eshel Hashomron Hotel in nearby Ariel.
At the hotel attending the wedding of a beloved cousin are Moshe and Esther Zachar when he notices the waitress acting strange; he realizes she has a terrorist bomb, but is too late with his warning. The brazen handler emboldened by his success plans bigger terrorist attacks on the enemy by attacking the Dragon from behind where it is vulnerable. Meanwhile DC desk bound FBI special agent Jillian Foster whose brother died in the Twin Towers collapse, Chicago college professor Greg Hanson seeking internet photos of the Dome of the Rock, and Moshe seeking vengeance soon find their worlds colliding trying to prevent a major biblical proportion assault.
STRIKE THE DRAGON is a superb counterterrorism thriller that makes the case that another attack is imminent and that the violent history in the Middle East is personal on a family level as much as it is on a religious plane and cannot be ignored. The story line is fast-paced from the opening scene when the Palestinian widow takes revenge on Israelis attending a wedding, which leads to Moshe seeking revenge in a spiraling feud that symbolizes no ending in sight. Readers will be hooked with this powerful look at terrorists striking at what they perceive is the evil dragon by the only way they feel they can succeed while the west operatives try to prevent another 9/11. As long as fanatics like Ibrahim and the Teacher still plot, the innocent remain endangered.
Harriet Klausner
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