One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [99]
We walked in silence for a minute. She said, “Yes.”
Man, is she stubborn. “Are you nuts? You’re going to flunk out of school. Our own government doesn’t give a shit about this. Even if we do go to D.C., we don’t have a clue where the terrorists are, or what they have. We won’t get anywhere, and you’ll just get a lighter bank account from paying the way.”
Jennifer crossed her arms. “Yeah. I know that. But my family has a long history of doing stupid shit. Just ask my uncle.” She looked hard at me. “What if someone like us existed before 9/11? Would you have wanted them to quit?”
Gee, thanks. I really feel slimy now. “No, I guess not.”
AFTER EXITING OUR FLIGHT IN ATLANTA, we proceeded down the narrow gateway funneling us into the customs complex of the United States. We had a connecting flight into Washington but still had to pass through U.S. Immigration to continue. We moved up to the counter together, where I showed my passport. The man behind the counter ran the bar code and stiffened.
I watched his expression turn to stone. He asked Jennifer, “Are you traveling together?”
She said yes and handed him her passport. He ran it through the scanner, his face showing no emotion. Turning back from the computer, he became pleasant.
“I’m afraid that I’m going to have to ask both of you to follow me. We’re going to need some additional information about your trip.”
I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Shit. We’ve been flagged because of the dead guys in Charleston.
Remaining pleasant, I asked, “Questions about what? We were only gone a few days. We can answer them right here.”
The customs agent remained deadpan, giving me no indication that he was a threat, but also no indication that he was friendly. “Sir, this won’t take but a couple of seconds. We’ve had some trouble with U.S. citizens coming back from Central America. All we want you to do is take a little survey to help us facilitate future travel. I don’t want to hold up the line here to do that. Once you’re done, you’ll be on your way.”
As we moved down the hallway to the secondary interrogation rooms, I dismissed the Charleston angle, since suspected murderers would have been arrested and handcuffed immediately. We were walking free and clear behind the customs official. I relaxed, thinking that maybe Kurt had set up a method to contact us, since he had left Belize before I could give him a phone number.
Entering the secondary interrogation area, I stood behind the customs official, listening to him tell the man at the desk who we were and where we were going. I waited while the man typed in the information. I saw a reflection of the computer screen on the windowpane to the man’s right. In it were the passport photos of both Jennifer and me, surrounded by words that were inverted due to the mirror image. I couldn’t make out what the paragraph underneath our pictures said, but did decipher the words above them: “WANTED FOR QUESTIONING ON SUSPECTED TERRORISM ACTIVITIES.” A spurt of adrenaline jolted my body.
Projecting an outward calm, I asked, “Can we use the bathroom before we do anything else? We haven’t had a chance to go since we landed.”
The agent said, “This won’t take a minute. Once we give you the surveys, you can do whatever you would like.”
I nodded, my mind racing. I knew what was about to happen. We would be separated and taken to different interrogation rooms. We would be locked in and questioned for hours. The interrogators would compare notes on the answers that we gave to see if they matched up. Using that information, they would continue the questioning. Since I hadn’t bothered to develop a cover story with Jennifer, it would do me no good to lie. Whatever I said wouldn’t match what Jennifer said. On top of that, Jennifer would more than likely tell the truth, believing that the truth would be the best course of action. Unfortunately, our story was so unbelievable that it would cause the customs agents to become more suspicious, not less.
I had no idea why we were flagged in the Homeland