Chapter Thirty-Five
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FORREST AND ‘THE PLAN’
By the time the Captain said, “Forrest, I believe you should stay here...” Forrest had already started formulating his ‘Plan’.
What was Forrest’s ‘Plan’? To be honest, at that precise moment he didn’t know either, it was a more ‘flying by the seat of his pants type plan’. Since the Captain was not going to allow Forrest to go with them to Dallas, Forrest had to figure out his own way to get there himself. There was only one way – Pegasus!!
Forrest was ‘fit to be tied’ as the meeting broke up and everyone was leaving. He was just mad... no, he was furious with his Grandpa. The gears in his head were spinning like a top. He had to have a plan – not just any old plan – he had to have ‘The Plan’. He knew he had to use Pegasus, but that was all he had... that wasn’t much. He had to have more. He had to think! Think!
Forrest started going over the obstacles to using the time-traveling machine - Pegasus. At the top of the list was access. The machine was located in the subbasement confines of SCAR headquarters, three stories down from street level, so breaking in was obviously out of the question. The only method to gain access to the laboratory was through the elevator. The staircase was locked with steel bars at the basement, and the security guard was the only person with the key. The elevator required authorized personnel have an official “access” card that must be swiped through the card reader and a four-digit code was required to be correctly entered at the same time. Forrest didn’t have a card and surely did not know the secret four-digit code. This card is only allotted to the personnel who work in the lab, and he did not know any of them well enough to bribe, threaten or coerce them into letting him use theirs. He had to put his brain to work.
The last to leave the conference room Forrest walked across the outer office. He was still steaming when Krista, his mother, called to him from her office, “Forrest you are not going to leave without saying ‘bye’, are you?”
Continuing to walk, he was oblivious to her question.
“Forrest!”
His reverie was snapped. He turned and walked over to her office door, “Sorry, Mom, I guess my mind was elsewhere – I was absorbed in this next mission, trying to figure out how I can contribute.”
Flash! He had the beginning of a plan!! He had forgotten, not only did the people working in the lab have access cards so did Grandpa, Spook, Tinker, Sam Lin, Si Lei AND his Mom!!
Forrest knew his Mom kept all her credit cards, and the... the access card in her wallet and the wallet always stayed in her purse, but her purse never left her sight. Hmmm, maybe this wasn’t as good a plan as he had originally envisioned.
“Come into my office Forrest, we haven’t talked for quite a while.” Opportunity!
“Yeah, okay Mom,” Forrest said walking across the soft, close weave carpet of her office. Flopping down on one of her large leather chairs, she asked how he had been doing. Back and forth they went with the ‘I’m okay’. ‘How about you?’ ‘Am I seeing anyone?’ You know the typical mother and son question and answer session. These sessions are more suited for the mother to quiz the son on his life than it is for the son to talk to his mother, but he saw a golden opportunity in this particular little chit chat.
His Mom had removed her wallet from her purse and had the wallet lying on the desk in front of her. He had to get her away from her desk. Forrest could see Part 1 of ‘The Plan’ beginning to shape up. If he played his cards right, he could get the access card from the wallet. She never went downstairs to the laboratory, so she would not miss it, at least not until Forrest had accomplished ‘The Plan’. At a break in the interrogation, he asked his Mom if she might have something cold to drink. He complained about having to sit in that conference room all afternoon with nothing but water to drink. Forrest tried to sound as pitiful as possible. Moms are suckers for pitiful sons.
It worked; sons know how to play moms. She had a fully stocked office bar she used to entertain Grandpa’s guests before they were allowed to enter the ‘Inner Sanctum’. On request by Forrest, she walked to the bar opening the frig door, and asked, “What is your pleasure?” Forrest named some obscure soda he had heard at one time or another, knowing full well she would not have that particular brand, but she looked through the bottles and cans anyway. While she had her head buried deep within the refrigerator’s innards, he quickly arose from his chair and quietly reached for her wallet. The access card was in the first credit card slot. He quickly slipped it out of its secure resting place, and silently replaced the wallet back in its previous spot on the desk and soundlessly slipped back into his chair. “I’m sorry Forrest, I don’t seem to have that type soda,” his Mom said peeking out from behind the mini-frig door.
“That’s fine Mom, anything you have will be okay,” he didn’t care if she brought water now - he had the card. Forrest loved it when a plan came together. What was he thinking? Yes, he might have the card, but he didn’t know the access code needed to gain entrance to the lab!! He didn’t have a plan all he had was the ‘want’ to have a plan. Forrest’s Mom, apologizing, handed him a Coke, and for the next few minutes, they chatted amicably until Forrest excused himself with the pretense he had to pick-up some clothes before the dry-cleaner closed.
On the elevator headed to the ground floor, Forrest gazed intently at the little card slot on the elevator wall next to the buttons controlling the floor destination. Thinking to himself all he had to do was slide the card, currently in his pocket, through the narrow opening and punch in four random numbers on the keypad he could arrive at the basement laboratory. No guard would be on duty – the lab closed at five p.m. sharp. Only people with access cards could get in, so no security other than this piece of thin plastic was necessary, or so Captain Scarburg and the others thought. They never figured they needed security from one of their own. They never thought about Forrest and ‘The Plan’.
The drive back to his apartment was trancelike. He did not even remember driving out of SCAR’s parking lot. His mind was racing. How could he get back into the building? All he had to do was tell the guard at the main entrance door he had forgotten something... some work, his computer... his jacket... he would think of something when the time came. Right now he had to come up with the access code.
Forrest opened his apartment door and went straight to his computer. He typed in Studies Concerning Antiquated Records, and the web search popped up a number of SCAR web sites. He had remembered a security person or maybe it was an FBI guy, he couldn’t remember whom, but one of them said most people use something familiar when making up a code or even a combination to a safe. They might use their birthday or the birthday of their wife or husband (as the case may be), children or grandchildren. He said about 80% of the time he could decipher the combination or code number by using this method. What the heck, Forrest decided he had nothing to lose.
First he looked up Grandpa’s birthday September 7, 1943. Now he thought, what can he make out of those numbers. September is the 9th month, okay there’s a nine. Well the 7 is obvious, but 1943 has four numbers, and he only needed two more. Which two? He went with ‘43’. There now, he had 9...7...4...3... okay, the next was Baba, then Spook and Tinker. On and on he went right on down the list with everyone, he could think of in the SCAR facility. After each person’s name, he wrote a four-digit number corresponding to his or her birthday.
This operation consumed the better part of two hours. When he finished he had almost two pages of numbers, but what if Grandpa didn’t use birthdays what else could he have used to program the access code? What about street addresses of their homes? Again he wasted another two hours and had a couple more pages of code numbers. What if the four-digit code isn’t a street address, he thought. Suddenly he stopped... this is crazy... he looked at the pages of numbers he had already assembled... he’ll be in that elevator all night just trying those
numbers. Now he reasoned he would go back to SCAR headquarters, with the list he had, get past the entrance guard, enter the elevator and start playing with the numbers and see what happened. If none of those numbers worked then he would come back to his apartment and start with Plan B, whatever ‘B’ was, shoot he hadn’t even come up with a good ‘A’ yet.
The time was 12:05 a.m., Tuesday, December 6, 2012.