Unholy Harvest

About the Book

Las Vegas has garnered the reputation as a town of winners and losers.  Imagine becoming the ultimate loser.  A young man named Ari comes to town on a medical convention and ends up minus one of his organs.  He finds himself immersed in a bathtub filled with ice and water following an evenings entertainment with a beautiful woman called Brandee.  This scenario has been dismissed as an urban myth.  But is it really?

The story revolves around a man obsessed to right the wrong that eventually led to the death of his ten-year-old daughter.  O.G. has put together a renegade team of highly skilled medical professionals to bring his plan to fruition.  He has also enlisted the services of an expatriate computer hacker in Denmark who conducts an anonymous remailer service on the Internet.

The man who sets the events in motion goes by the alias of O.G..  His twisted obsession to provide organs on the black market was precipitated by the untimely death of his young daughter, caught in the bureaucratic system of organ transplants.  Every year 4,000 people die while waiting for an organ donation.  There is no unified system for organ donations.  Red tape often determines who will or will not get an organ transplant.

What would lead a talented group of medical professionals to take part in such an Unholy Harvest?  Leader, with his team of Checker, Gas Man, Night and Day were harmonious in their disdain of the medical establishment for a variety of reasons.  Each member readily justifies their participation.  Leader became blackballed from his local medical community when his diagnosis clashed with those who held the power and influence.  Checker was bankrupted by a questionable malpractice suit and an incompetent lawyer.  Gas Man let gambling and the resulting debts force him from finishing his degree as an anesthesiologist.  Night (Nancy) and Day (Darlene) were operating nurses fed up with bad schedules an the large egos of doctors.  Greed and the Hippocratic Oath are the antithetical forces dealt with by members of the harvest team.  Their expertise and advances in technology allow for the system to work so efficiently.

Karl, the computer hacker, runs his anonymous remailer service from Copenhagen Denmark.  Years before he escaped Operation Sundevil, the hacker crackdown that took place in Arizona.  His service allows illegal enterprises to thrive on the World Wide Web, by providing anonymity for his customers.

Brandee, the prostitute, is unwittingly providing the victims for the organ harvest. Hired by O.G., she believes the drugs she has given to the victims are part of an experimental program.  O.G. has won her over with the a convincing story.  She finds herself put in jeopardy when she witnesses an E.M.S. team leaving the hotel room where she returns to retrieve a lost necklace.  Even though she has explicit instructions not to return to the hotel room once the drugs are administered, she disobeys.  Her actions are seen and reported to O.G.

Distraught, she goes to the hospital to determine the status of Ari, the man she gave the drugs to.  Happenstance while at the hospital reunites Brandee with a former neighbor, Cassie Bentley.  Cassie is the 911 operator who took the call from the latest organ harvest victim.  She too has come to the hospital to inquire about the status of Ari.  

While events play out with Brandee, O.G., Cassie and the team members, a United States government agent is in hot pursuit of Karl.  The agent, Martin Bearston, enlists Interpol and local Danish law enforcement in his search for the hacker.  Through his efforts, Karl is arrested and interrogations lead to the name O.G. in Las Vegas.

Lieutenant Frank Merriweather of the Las Vegas Police Department receives the assignment of tracking down the perpetrators of the harvest.  He

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