" A Necessary Portal "

     Twenty-one year old Sharayah Dubois was adopted at nine-years of age by Rick and Marge Wyatt late in their lives when they finally came to grips with the death of their only child Dick as a teenager. To celebrate her milestone birthday, they have invited her to share the first three weeks of their six-week ‘Second Honeymoon’. Shortly after her return Stateside, to stay with Marge's elderly father, so as not to miss the first week of classes, a jihadist attack by young militants on the isolated Dubai Island used by Westerners and their supporters becomes a horrific reality for the quiet twenty-one-year old college sophomore and her family.

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     But when the bloody siege extends to a third day no one outside the building suspects the delay is unintentional! The original goal to attract sufficient foreign journalists to witness the death of Andrew Wyatt and then inflict the maximum amount of terror that a mere seven member terrorist cell could hope to accomplish, by exploding a ‘dirty’ bomb to destroy the island, casting up as much radioactive debris around the world in the atmosphere as possible with a limited amount of plutonium, is delayed by the accidental discovery of a secret cache of guns, ammunition, missiles, grenades and rocket launchers hidden in caves carved under the hotel that is secretly owned by the Wyatt family! The attackers must hastily gather a flotilla of local boats to remove and hide the vast army-sized store of guns and ammunition without drawing the attention of the reporters they have lured to the tropical paradise, who are now bored with the endless stalemate. 

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           During the course of the story, the Reader is drawn deeper and deeper into the internal realities of the conflict until no one is left to stop the final connection and detonation of the Jihadist’s determined march toward martyrdom but Shaw and her wounded father Rick!