Medical Examiner confirmed that the clinic had used gas to paralyze the four women and that one of the gas cylinders from each operating room contained a paralyzing agent. “I also found a strange substance present in the blood drained from the women’s bodies, which was recovered from the operating rooms, and there was a high concentration of that substance in each woman’s esophagus. It’s still being tested.”
The Assistant District Attorney sat in on each of the initial interviews, and she reviewed the evidence from the clinic and the Medical Examiner’s findings. At the arraignment for Dr. Black and his employees, she insisted that they all be held without bail. The Judge agreed. She also informed the judge that since all of the defendants had participated in the commission of a felony that directly led to the murder of four women, she’d be seeking the death penalty for all of them. When the lawyers for the defendants protested, she announced that there’d be no deals for anyone unless he or she came forward and agreed to testify against the others.
The Grand Jury quickly handed down indictments for all of the defendants. The Assistant District Attorney gave the defendants a day to think about her offer before approaching the lawyers to see if anyone wanted to make a deal for a reduced sentence. Dr. Black and the other doctors who actually did the harvesting refused to say anything, but several of the nurses and techs agreed to talk. They described what happened to the men and women brought to the clinic, and they revealed how many people the clinic had harvested over the two-year period that Dr. Black worked with the human traffickers.
None of the defendants who were willing to testify in return for a reduced sentence knew who brought the men and women to the clinic to be harvested, nor did they know where the organs and tissues went once they left the clinic. Only Dr. Black knew that, and he wasn’t talking.
Jack Thrasher sat in the Lt. Grand Master’s office a week later. Alasdair Stirling, the Lt. Grand Master of the Order of the Saltire, and Maxwell Preston, the Chief Intervention Officer and Intervention Analysis Committee Chairman, listened as Jack informed them about his case against Dr. Black and the other employees of the clinic. Alasdair and Max’s faces couldn’t hide the horror they felt as Jack described how the illegal organ harvesting business worked.
“And ten to fifteen people a week were butchered and murdered at this clinic?” Max asked.
Jack checked his notes. “On average, yes.”
“And this is really happening in our city?” Alasdair asked.
“Yes, sir,” Jack replied. “And in many other cities around the country. I tried to do a search to see how many cases we’re talking about nationwide, but unless the harvesters are caught in the act, there’s no way to tell how many missing persons reports are tied to human trafficking, organ harvesting, or some other crime. The way they destroy the remains makes it next to impossible to know what has happened to their victims.”
Max tapped a stack of folders on the table next to him. “We’ve been performing interventions against human traffickers for years. Most of the cases involve importing or exporting boys and girls as sex slaves or as slave labor, but this is the first I’ve heard of organ harvesting being a form of human trafficking.”
“Homeland Security and the FBI have web pages on the subject,” Jack stated. “It’s relatively new, but with so many affluent countries experiencing aging populations as the baby-boomers get older, the desire for black market organs to satisfy the demand for transplant parts has never been higher. There just aren’t enough people voluntarily donating their organs to keep up with the demand, and it’s created a multi-billion dollar industry. That’s how they can attract otherwise reputable surgeons to do the harvesting, rather than backroom butchers working in unsanitary conditions.”
Alasdair leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. After a moment, he said, “The Order has come together before to tackle problems on national and global scales. The counterfeiting ring we brought down a few years back is one example. Il Nona twenty years ago is another, the President Sanborn affair, the Mancuso affair, on and on… Every country in which we have Commanderies has human trafficking problems. Yes, it’s a multi-billion dollar industry; yes, there are hundreds of players involved all around the world, making an intervention against them more like smoking out cockroaches than taking down a single criminal gang or enterprise. It’s a four-hundred-headed snake, and there’s always a new head ready to take the place of one that’s brought down. There are people involved in acquiring humans to traffic, transporting them to their destinations, distributing them once they arrive… not to mention those who handle the movement of money from one part of the supply chain to the next.”
Alasdair sat back up and looked at Max and Jack. “But just because human trafficking is big and involved and next to impossible to solve doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t make every effort to take on these bastards. We may never fully eradicate this illegal activity, but we can chip away at it, making it less profitable and a less desirable activity to participate in.”
Max nodded slowly. Jack looked thoughtful.
Alasdair leaned forward. “Would you two mind leading the effort on this? I need you to pull together the information you have regarding human trafficking, and I need a series of proposals that I can take to the Grand Master. You can use the entire Intervention Analysis Committee to help, but I need it thorough, and I need it soon.”
Jack and Max agreed to Alasdair’s request.
“Very well, gentlemen. Jack, thanks for bringing this to my attention. Now we need to devise a plan for doing something about it.”
Jamie was surrounded. Two of her opponents feinted attacks from the left and the right, hiding the real attack coming from in front and behind.
Two men and one woman watched Jamie from above. “I think they have her this time,” one of the men commented.
“I doubt it,” the woman countered.
Jamie leaped in the air. It appeared that she was planning to do a spinning kick at the opponent on her left, but instead she made a quarter turn in the air and did a split kick that caught the opponents in front of her and behind her in their chests. No sooner had her feet touched the floor than she leaped up again, this time performing the spinning kick that caught the opponent to her left on the side of his head, sending him flying. She turned and faced the opponent to her right. When he changed his stance, she somersaulted forward and delivered several blows to his abdomen, sending him backwards.
“Told you,” the woman said.
“Lucky guess,” the man retorted.
Jamie continued attacking her opponents. They appeared off-guard and couldn’t organize any combined efforts against her. One by one, her opponents withdrew until only one remained. She and her final opponent were evenly matched – physically – but her unpredictable and aggressive style made it hard to put her on the defensive. The longer they fought, the faster she moved, until he could no longer fend off her repeated attacks. When he finally withdrew, Jamie stood straight and bowed to him before bowing to her other opponents.
“We’re running out of instructors who want to spar with her,” the dojo owner said to Emily as he looked down and saw Jamie’s opponents come forward to congratulate her on another great match. “They meet here every Friday night to plan how they’re going to fight her on Saturday mornings, and she still wins every match.”
Emily smiled and looked over at Tom, who had walked back to the center of the weapons training room above the dojo floor so he could finish stretching. “She’s a natural at fighting, that’s for sure.”
“If I were twenty years younger, I’d take her on, but at my age she’d probably kill me.”
“I know what you mean,” Tom said from the center of the room.
Students began arriving, and the dojo owner and Emily took their places. Jamie arrived a few minutes later. She was sweating, but she looked happy. She smiled at her parents, bowed to the dojo owner, and took her place with the rest of the students.
Tom