Krista had been his Executive Assistant going nigh on twenty years now. She was a beautiful tall brunette with high cheekbones and tan skin as soft as a baby’s butt. Her alluring beauty reminded one of a model. Normally her hair was arranged in a spinsterly looking bun on top of her head and instead of contact lenses she preferred dark horn-rimmed glasses. She seldom wore pants preferring instead skirts or dresses. Meeting her on the street one would think - librarian. Nothing could be farther from the truth. She had a Master’s in International Studies with a Minor in Linguistics. A librarian? A Secretary? No way, and a mother with five children, three boys and two girls - three of them triplets. Forrest the oldest then the triplets Bud, Lou and Gabrielle followed by the youngest Olive Maria.
Krista’s last name was also Scarburg. It should be, she was married to Captain Scarburg’s son Robert Scarburg, III, better known as ‘Trey’. Trey served as SCAR’s Assistant Director directly under his father Captain Scarburg.
Krista was the Captain’s daughter-in-law! Tonight they both were burning the midnight oil preparing tomorrows Powerpoint® presentations for the on-goin SCAR expeditions. ‘Dog and Pony Shows’ as the Captain like to call them.
“To busy to talk to Admiral James Altman the SECNAV (Secretary of the Navy),” asked Krissy?
“No.... uh... no.... of course not. Put him through on line one.” Clearing his throat Captain Scarburg reached for the receiver, “Hello Mr. Secretary - Director Scarburg here. Haven’t heard from you in a while Jim. How are Louise and the kids?”
“Fine Bob, fine but this isn’t a personal call.”
“Sorry Admiral. What can I do for you?”
“Bob, I’m afraid I have some bad news...I just received a call from Admiral Nicky Jamesly the Commander of the Coast Guard. It seems we’ve, uh... umm... had a commercial airliner go down. Continental Flight 1425 just a couple of hours ago.”
“Okay, Jim I know Nick, good man, this seems serious, but how does this concern SCAR?”
“I have been informed that you had an expedition that left for Mexico this morning. Your SCAR team including, uh... uh... Forrest, Bud and Olive Maria, I understand, were traveling to Mexico City to examine some Inca ruins, right?”
“Yes sir, Mayan ruins, but regardless, Mexico City that’s right. What’s the significance Admiral? What are you hesitant to tell me?”
“Bob, uh... umm... I hate to be so blunt - Flight 1425 bound for Mexico City with Forrest, Bud, uh... uh...”
“What is it Admiral...what are you trying to say?”
“Bob it disappeared off radar nearing the eastern coast of Mexico. So far we have not had any response from the plane or its...well Forrest, Bud and Olive were on that flight...”
“No! No! Tell me there’s been a mistake.”
“Sorry Bob there is no mistake. We have checked, double-checked and rechecked the double-check.”
“Jim I need to do something - what can I do?”
“Nothing...nothing right now...just sit tight...I have the biggest sea and land rescue operation underway that we have garnered in a long time. Don’t give up hope we will find them - they could have put down on some uncharted landing field somewhere along the Mexican coast. There a number of un-plotted strips drug smugglers use that we are not aware of; keep a stiff upper lip, all will be okay. I’ll let you know of any further developments. My heartfelt regrets to Baba.” (Baba was the greeting everyone called Barbara the Captain’s wife)
“Will do...thanks for the heads-up Jim. Keep me informed. So long Admiral.”
* * * * * *
Captain Scarburg replaced the telephone receiver leaned back in his Spanish red Corinthian leather armchair and let his mind drift back to the beginning of SCAR.
With his thoughts off the Mexico flight for a moment he remembered how this all got started when grandson Forrest first burglarizing his safe. ‘Well’, he thought, ‘burglarize’ might be too harsh a word. My how the images of that time so long ago runs through my head like a kaleidoscope’, he thought.
No sooner than he had gotten absorbed in his reverie Krista burst into his office, “Captain. It cannot be true. Surely it must have been another plane and not the one that Forrest, Bud and Olive were on.”
“Listening in on my phone calls again, huh Krista?”
“Captain forgive me but its not everyday we get a call from the SECNAV. But anytime it deals with my children Forrest, Bud, Olive or anyone else at SCAR darn right I am going to be listening. Why did you let them go?”
“Come on in Krissy. Please sit down. I have a couple of things I need to tell you. First, with this tragedy I realized how I have never told you how glad and fortunate I was when you came to work for me here at SCAR. You have been a good wife, daughter-in-law and mother to Forrest, Bud and Olive, and not to forget Lou and Gabrielle either.
“In all the years you have worked here I have never told you how SCAR was created. Get comfortable and I will try to explain. This is way overdue. It will help explain, in part, why I sent your children and my grandkids to Mexico.”
Sliding open the heavy drawer to his large oak sea captain’s desk the Captain seemed to be looking for something. “Oh yeah, here it is,” he said pulling out a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels® and a sturdy mug with the Special Forces motto “De oppresso liber” embossed on its side. The mug was a leftover from his days in Vietnam with the Army’s 5th Special Forces Group. “Would you like a little nip? You may need it before I get through.”
“Thanks, but no...just get on with it, please Captain.”
“Krissy this story began when your little ‘innocent’ Forrest, as a teenager, noticed two suspicious looking men coming and going from my gun store. Forrest had a summer job, as you know, working at our restaurant next door. Forrest became obsessed with finding out why a couple of men driving a black Ford® sedan came and went week after week but never seemed to purchase anything. He believed something secretive was goin on, and it was. It has been so long...Forrest devised...what did he call it...oh yeah...The Plan to discover this ‘secret’.
“The plan was for him to break into my gunroom’s heavy-duty two-door steel safe. As you know the one-ton safe resides in my basement gunroom. He reasoned the discovery of the ‘secret’ surely lay hidden in there somewhere.
Forrest found my hidden combination and managed to get my safe open but he found a couple things he had not planned on. First he found Pop’s (Robert Scarburg, Sr.) Medal of Honor Citation from our tour of duty in Vietnam with the 5th Special Forces and second he found a beautiful six-sided platinum, gold and silver clock looking device. Did I ever mention I was with the 5th too?”
“Only about a hundred times.”
“Oh sorry - where was I - oh yeah - it was much later that I had to explain to Forrest that this ‘clock’ was not a clock at all but what we now refer to as the ‘Mindtraveler’. I had set the coordinates and the time on its face to correspond to a battle that was taking place at Polei Kleng, South Viet Nam on 7 September 1967. The ‘Mindtraveler’ had the ability to transport Forrest back to that time and place and he was allowed to witness all the events Pop and I were involved in concerning the discover and subsequent use of the data concerned with an event called The P.H.O.T.O. The ‘Mindtraveler’ caveats are simple: it is impossible for the time traveler to communicate, be seen, or in any way involve themselves in the events they are watching. The actions they watch are real but they just cannot participate. I believe it might have been Einstein who said, “time wasn’t a straight line with a beginning or an end but was curved so that the past the present and the future were all available at one time - if we had a method to access each particular segment” - we do now - the ‘Mindtraveler’.
“In Vietnam, back in ‘67 Pop was a Master Sergeant and a medic with the 5th Special Forces. I was a Captain, also with the 5th, sorry, you already knew that. My specialty was Intelligence gathering and Linguistics. But I must back up a bit and get the actors into their correct pos
itions as a film director might say. Krissy let me tell you this saga as Forrest described it to me.”
* * * * * *
“Pop had earlier led a team of Special Forces into Laos on a reconnaissance mission. During this mission he and all his A-Team members were captured. For a week they were marched across the Laotian border and deep into Cambodia.
“At a remote jungle location Pop was beaten and severely tortured by a blue beret wearing Russian Special Forces or Spetsnaz as they are called Colonel named Nikita Egorov and his second in command Senior Lieutenant Ivan Petrov. The subject of their interrogation was a name? A place? A code? Or a person called The P.H.O.T.O. At that time Pop did not know The P.H.O.T.O’s significance. In fact, he knew nothing of the name.
“Hours were spent torturing him to no avail. The Russian Colonel resorted to using a Marine K-Bar 10” fighting knife to carve a large ‘S’ into Pop’s chest. The colonel used the excuse that Dad thought himself tough enough to be the famous hero ‘Superman’.
“And you know I believe he was. Well back to Forrest’s story.”
“Each time the Russians would ask about The P.H.O.T.O. Pop would provide an unsatisfactory answer. The colonel would cut another piece of flesh from his chest. Little did Colonel Egorov not realize that Pop knew nothing of The P.H.O.T.O. and regardless of how much skin he cut off he could not reveal information he did not possess.
“Later after a firefight between the 1st Calvary Airmobile Division and the Viet Cong Pop was rescued and sent to the U.S. Army hospital at Pleiku, South Vietnam. The medical personnel in that facility nursed him back to health but in doing so they christened him with the nickname Big ‘S’ because of the large ‘S’ scar cut deeply into his chest.
“At the time I was a Captain in Vietnam assigned as an Intelligence Officer in the 5th Special Forces Group..”
“Did I ever mention I was in the 5th?... Oh yeah, right, sorry!”
“I was detailed to find Pop, er, uh, MSG Scarburg at the 75th Evacuation Hospital and award him military decorations for himself and his A-Team members. I was also ordered to assign Sergeant Scarburg, uh, Pop another mission upon his release from the hospital.
“During the time I was with Pop, now called Big ‘S’, the nursing staff let me see his large ‘S’ scar. To endure myself to Pop and to identify with the inhumane torture the Russians inflicted and really just for sentimental reasons I had a smaller ‘S’ tattooed on my chest. Thus Pop has forever been known as Big ‘S’ and I have taken the handle of Little ‘S’.
“The mission Pop was ordered to accomplish was to find The P.H.O.T.O. before the Russians and retrieve any and all data that concerned it. Pop and I along with eleven others formed a Special Forces A-Team and parachuted into Cambodia looking for a place called Pac Toul. It was thought by Army Intelligence The P.H.O.T.O. might be located there. After this mission we returned to the United States and Pop and I and four others, with the help of the CIA, founded SCAR.
“The other members of SCAR’s founding team were Dr. Spurgeon Loo Kim “Spook,” his wife Ling Lu “Tinker” and Dr. Kim’s two brothers Sam “Bud” Lin Kim and Si Lei “Lou” Kim. Sam and Si both had been directors of major black ops clandestine CIA operations in Southeast Asia.
“Ever since Spurgeon and Ling met in that distant place called Pac Toul in the wilds of Cambodia during the Vietnam War she has always been known as ‘Tinker’. The name ‘Ling’ translates to ‘Bell’ in the Chinese language - thus ‘Tinker Bell’ or just ‘Tinker’ - well you had to be there to get the humor of it. It seemed funny at the time.” Chuckling to himself, “You know it still does today.”
“Anyway, Tinker and a number of other scientists had been captured by a group of extraterrestrials. Yeah aliens, and yes they really do exist even if our government denies them. The little green, well in this case little grey Aliens possessed the information of The P.H.O.T.O. Pop and I along with Spook, Tinker, Sam and Si secured the data and later formed SCAR. We have used the Alien information over the years to produce some marvelous inventions. We did not invent them we just used data from the Alien documents and re-discovered them, so to speak. Krissy you have been here so long you probably know more about them than I but just to name a few things that we developed using their data were CDs, DVDs, the Internet, Personal Computers, Communication Satellites, the GPS system, Cordless Telephones, Plasma Television and much, much more. But two of the most exciting were the ‘Mindtraveler’ and the ‘Edison’. I’ll tell you more about it in a minute. But the aliens had developing something in the Cambodian jungle that even I still marvel at today, more about this later too.
“Dr. Spurgeon Kim’s handle was 'Spook'. Yes... an operative with the CIA, but his nickname did not come from being a 'spy' but from his name - the ‘Sp’ from Spurgeon, the ‘oo’ from Loo and the ‘K’ from Kim - thus SPOOK. His fellow A-team members of the secret U.S. Special Forces lead operation pinned the nickname on him way back when and it has remained to the present.
“As you also know Krissy your two sons are Spook’s godsons. Bud was named in honor of Spook's oldest brother Sam Lin Kim and Lou for the other brother. Scratching your head again? I remember when you and Trey named the boys. You said you liked the names ‘Buddy’ and ‘Louis’ names when they were suggested to you but at the time I don’t believe you grasped the Spook and Tinker connection.”
“How could we have named my two sons in honor of Spook’s brother ‘Sam’ and ‘Se Lei?’ I thought just Trey and I had come up with their names.
“I’m glad you asked Krissy. I would have thought Trey would have explained years ago, but I guess you have never been told.”
“Your son Lou was named in honor of Dr. Spurgeon Kim's younger brother Si Lei Kim. What did you say? - This will have to be explained? It really is funny - well we thought so at the time too. You probably won’t!
“While in Thailand, Sam Lin and Si Lei had decided to join forces with Pop, Spook, Tinker and I in our attempt to escape with the Alien documents found at Pac Toul, Cambodia. While standing outside an automobile, near Bangkok, arguing with each other Pop, who was sitting inside the car, remarked that Spook’s two brothers reminded him of the comedians Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, thus the nicknames ‘Bud’ and ‘Lou.”
“Thanks Captain,” Krissy said grinning. “I might have been better off not knowing that! But, what the heck, I still love them regardless. But I can’t wait...what did you mean Captain, what was these two marvelous SCAR discoveries? You have already explained the Mindtraveler.”
“One of the greatest discovery has been a machine we call “The Edison.” This machine was totally constructed using the Alien technology. Using this machine we can hear sound and see movement in photographs, handwritten letters, signatures or any kind of man-made written material. The sound is captured at the time the photograph or document was created. At first we could only extract about thirty seconds of sound, but we have advanced the technology so that we can capture sound and movement up to a couple of minutes now.”
“Photographs with sound? Nothing special about this, is there Captain? We’ve had movies and video cameras for years.”
“Right Krissy, but I’m talking about a ‘photograph’; a still picture that might have been made by Matthew Brady during the Civil War, just a two-dimensional photograph, nothing else. We can now extract the sound at the time the photograph was taken. We can hear the photographer talk and hear what those in the picture are saying. In addition to the sound for roughly those two minutes the ‘subjects’ within the photograph move as they talk.
“Not only can we extract sound from photographs but now we can get sound from written documents like letters and printed material. Recently we were able to use this Alien technology on painting and historical documents such as the Declaration of Independence the Constitution and the Magna Charter. We can even ‘read’ words chiseled on monuments and other ancient works in stone.”
“All this has been going on right under my n
ose and I am just now finding out about it?”
“Sorry Krissy but this project is rated higher than “Top Secret”. Top Secret clearance everyone says is the highest government clearance available - not true - here you need a Q clearance from Department of Energy (DOE), and a SCI (Special Compartmentalized Information) clearance from the CIA and it is strictly on a need to know basis. I thought it was time you needed to know.
“Back to the Aliens...we know they have been coming to Earth for thousands of years. Their expertise was used to construct most of the wonders of the ancient world, such as the pyramids in Egypt and supplied the Incas and Mayans of Central America with their phenomenal astronomical and mathematical abilities.”
“Does this have something to do with the reason why you sent Forrest, Bud and Olive to Mexico?”
“Yes, absolutely. This is why I am explaining SCAR’s mission. You see the Aliens have four symbols that identify them. At present we have never understood what they mean or why they use them.”
“Symbols? What are they?”
“They use an ox, an eagle, a man’s face and a lion. Before you ask Krissy we don’t know the significance of them. They are like calling cards. We have found them all over the world at most of our major ancient monuments. If you check your Bible in the Book of Ezekiel, Chapter 1, Verse 10 they are described but we still don’t understand their importance. I have read it so many times I can quote it from memory it said, ‘As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.’
“Today’s odyssey was to a remote farming community outside the small town of Tonina, Mexico where it had been reported that a farmer had unearthed an ancient rectangular obelisk type object with inscriptions, thought to be Mayan in his plowed field. At the top on one side was carved a bull or ox. Another side had a man’s face another side a bird or eagle and the final side had a leopard or lion. We know who put the obelisk there and we know why. The Edison’s analysis told us that but we had to go see for ourselves. That’s why I sent Forrest, Bud and Olive along with their team to do some investigating.