79
Wednesday, March 31, 2021, 5:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Janice was awakened by a loud banging on her front door.
After a moment of bleary incomprehension, the strangeness and menacing aspect of the banging penetrated her torpor, and she jumped out of bed, threw on a robe, and went downstairs to the front door of her townhouse.
“Who is this?”
“Federal marshals, ma’am,” came the answer.
“What?”
“Federal marshals, ma’am. We have a warrant. Please open the door or we will have to break it open.”
Janice unlocked the door and opened it, and was almost immediately pushed back into her living room by four dark-clad agents. One of them, seemingly the boss, walked up to her, handing her what she assumed was a warrant.
“Are you Janice Isley?”
“I am,” she said. “What the heck is this about?”
“You are being detained under suspicion of a conspiracy against the United States of America.”
“What?” Janice said.
“You are being detained under the provisions of the USAPATRIOT Act. You may have five minutes to get dressed and to call an attorney.”
“I AM an attorney,” Janice said.
“That is your choice,” the head agent said. “You have five minutes to get dressed and come along with us. Do not attempt to run. We have agents stationed outside both the front and back of this house.”
“I’m not running anywhere. I’m going upstairs to get dressed.”
Janice started walking upstairs, shaking. She thought of whom she could call.
Vaneida? She’s not a lawyer, but maybe she could help. Unless she is being picked up too.
Instantly Janice knew that this was the case.
What about Jenna? No, Nature Girl’s on another camping trip.
As she pulled on some sweats, Janice wracked her brains to think of someone else who could help. The partners at her law firm? They were mostly conservative. They were not too happy with her having been arrested on January 20. Law school classmates? She could not think of one in a position to help.
“Ms. Isley?”
“I’m coming.” She finished getting dressed and grabbed her purse. She made her way down the stairs again.
One of the agents said, “You get one call. Then we confiscate your cell phone. You should make the call now. If you don’t get through to the person you want to, you can call one other person. Then we take the phone. You can do it in the kitchen.”
Janice walked into the kitchen and pulled her cell phone out. She thought for a second as she stared at the screen. She went to the “A” names and hit Vaneida’s name and waited. The phone instantly went to voicemail. Janice thought for a second, then hung up. She scrolled down to the “Os” and then hit the contact number.
“Hello?” an eerily familiar female voice said.
“Uh… the President gave me this number to call in case of an emergency,” she said, then cursed herself inwardly. How suspicious does that sound? “My name is Janice Isley. I’m with the Student Nonviolent Resistance Movement.”
“Uh… hold on a second. I think he’s upstairs.”
There were some muffled sounds of calling, inquiry, then the sound of the phone being passed to someone else.
“Okomo here.”
“Mr. President?”
“Yes?”
“This is Janice Isley, from SNRM. I’m being arrested. I think maybe Vaneida was also. She gave me your number to hold in case we needed some help.”
“Who is arresting you?”
“U.S. Marshals Service.”
“And where are they taking you?”
“I don’t know. Hold on…”
She yelled out to the agents, “Where are you guys taking me?”
“D.C. Lockup,” one of them responded.
“D.C. Lockup,” she repeated.
“Okay,” Okomo said. “I’ll get over there.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Janice said.
“Okay,” Okomo said.
Janice hung up and walked out into the living room. One of the agents held out some handcuffs.
“Really?” she said.
“Turn around,” he said. She complied. He snapped the cuffs on her and turned her toward the door. Another agent opened the door for her; the others were already going through her desk and bookshelves.
“You can just ask me about anything,” Janice said as they walked out to the waiting van. “You don’t have to trash my place.”
The agents took no notice and kept going through her things. The other two brought her back to the van. It was not like the van that had taken her to jail after the Inauguration; that one was a cheery white, with red and blue markings. There was something a bit more menacing about this one. This one was black, for one thing, with tinted windows.
The agents put her in the middle passenger seat in the second row, and sat on either side of her. The agent on her left patted the top of the driver’s seat, and the van took off.
***
“What was that all about?” Marilyn Okomo asked her husband.
“You remember that SNRM outfit, the student organization that I spoke to a few weeks ago?”
“Vaguely,” she said.
“Well, one of their people is being arrested, and more may have been already. You remember Vaneida Allen, right? The professor at Douglass?”
“Vaguely, again,” Marilyn answered.
“Well, it looks like the Justice Department is picking them all up. I told them I would help if they got in trouble.”
“Don’t go,” Marilyn said.
“I told them I would help,” he answered.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she said.
“Well, we all should have a bad feeling,” Okomo said. “If a nonviolent protest group can be jailed simply for expressing their First Amendment rights, while a huge number of gun nuts can simply storm their state capitol buildings and depose the legitimate governments of their states, expressing what they see as their Second Amendment rights, with zero consequence, then something is upside down in this country.”
“I agree,” she said. “But send someone else. You’ve done enough.”
“Sometimes ‘enough’ is just not enough,” he said.
He called out to his Secret Service detail.
“Luke,” he said. “I’ve got to go to the D.C. Lockup. Can you bring the van around?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
He looked at his phone. The President was Tooting again.
–<() I will be seeing you at the Thank You Rally tonight! Wear your MK Medallions! Real Americans show they are Virus Free because of the President’s Fast Action!
“What a nut,” Okomo said, grabbing a mask off the counter.
© 2020 Nolan O’Brian