“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep because of it.”
Sam waited a couple minutes. “Why you bring ’at up for?”
“I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem that bad right now.”
“Thangs like ’at, you know. I told you ’bout where I come from, ’ere in South Branch. ’Is shit don’t much change ’at ’at place is still shit. ’Spective or not, one thang don’t make ’nother better or worse. ’Ey still the same. ’Is sucks. ’At damn light sucked. And ’at shitty place I growed up sucked.”
“That sounds funny from you.”
“Why?”
“Because you manage to be happy.”
“’Cause I don’t thank one bad thing makes ’nother one good. It’s less confusing when you just honest with your self ’bout how thangs work.” He smiled. “Take ’at ’plexity outta your life, son. It’ll make you live longer.”
I hoped he could take all the “’plexity” of his life where Tish was concerned.
Avery moved up to the captain’s chair behind the driver’s seat. “Are we going to run out of fuel?”
Sam looked at me and shook his head. “Damn, son. It was better ’fore he started talkin.”
I laughed for the first time in a long time. “It’ll be close, but we should make it.”
“Tell me how much fuel we have and the distance, and I will run the numbers.”
“How ’bout you just worry ’bout ’em messages.”
“I have translated several of them.”
I craned my neck to look back at him. “Why are you just telling us this?”
“We have been attending to other more pressing matters.”
I let a few uncomfortable moments pass before breaking the silence. “Yeah.” I paused again, not exactly knowing what to say. “How about telling us what’s up with the messages?”
“Korean is a difficult language.”
“And?”
He then flipped through a notepad that he had apparently been using to keep record his translations. “The phone you found at the radar site belonged to a leader in the Order. I would go so far as to say he was the leader in Barrow.”
“Yeah, I don’t see how that’s possible.”
“The evidence is quite clear.”
”How is a damn Russian leadin ’em fake North Korean sonofabitches? ’At don’t make no sense.”
“The evidence is there to back up my supposition.”
“Maybe you mistranslated?” I asked.
He snapped his fingers several times. “It is all in the interrogative nature of the messages. Leaders are asked. Not told.”
Sam grunted his way towards a reply, but I cut him off before he could get it out. “What?”
“He was sent mostly questions. Most of which came in the form of short questions, which are not prone to misinterpretation.”
“’At actually makes sense,” Sam said.
I still didn’t believe that a Russian would lead anyone in the Order. I didn’t have any doubts at all about the Russians offering their help. While I was certainly no expert on U.S. and Russian relations, I knew enough to know they lusted for their former glory. Knocking off the country that broke down the wall and crumbled their super-power status would go a hell of a long way in helping them rebuild their past glories. Which begged the question, and really buttressed my view that North Korea would be smarter than to let a country like Russia enter a leadership role when there was no way Russia would ever allow North Korea to grab the power that would surely come from taking down the U.S.
For the next thirty slow-going miles, we discussed his findings, including confirming some of what Kelley told me about the Grays. One thing became evident. There wasn’t complete agreement between the leader and those beneath him. This seemed very odd because anyone knows in these kinds of oppressive regimes, you knew better to dissent too much. Yet, they argued with one another.
Much of the disagreement stemmed from the Grays. One of the messages said, “Byeongsa kill us.” The leader said something to the effect of, “Then you shall die well for the cause.” The man or woman – there was no way to know gender, because there were no names, just numerical identifiers – replied, “There will be none of us left to carry out the mission if we all die.” That same person went on to say, “The Byeongsa is tainted and must be dealt with.” The reply was mostly just to do your fucking job.
Then there was endless squabbling over who was over what. There weren’t clearly defined leadership roles below the ones at the top. It seemed to me that everyone below the main leaders was jockeying their way into leadership positions, which frustrated the hell out of the guy we killed, whose numerical name, by the way, was 997231. Avery had translated just a few of the shorter messages between a couple people downstream from 997231. He was admonishing them for taking charge of an operation they had no part in. 997231 said, simply, to one of them, “STOP.” Avery said there were hundreds of messages like that.
Avery had an extra bit of exuberance talking about the last string he had translated. After listening to what he said, it was clear that the phone had come from a leader. “Terminate 9972315 and 9972316. They are traitors to the cause.” The reply was, “For the great leader.” I assumed he was talking about Kim Jong-un.
There were who knows how many more waiting to be translated. Avery just needed time. Time, I thought. It had taken on a completely different meaning. How much time would it be before we ran across more Grays or the Order. How much time before we ran out of fuel, or food, or water. How much more time before a bullet had your number – had my number. Just a few days or so ago, a twelve-hour shift at the Patch was beyond terrible. I thought about what Sam had said just minutes earlier. I shook my head.
“What you over ’ere shakin your head ’bout?” Sam asked.
I decided to not rehash the relativity argument or my dark thinking. Instead, I brought up what I couldn’t shake loose. “I just don’t understand why a Russian would be leading the Order.”
Sam stared at my blankly. “Maybe ’ey workin tagether. I can’t see ’at little shithole of a country putting ’is tagether. Ain’t no way.”
“Maybe.”
Avery cut in. “We provided both fighting and training in Vietnam.”
“I’m aware of this,” I said. “I just can’t see a guy like Kim Jong Un being okay with it.”
“I do not believe they have the technology to do any of this. They can barely lunch an ICBM without it exploding as it launches. I have zero confidence in them coming up with the biological agent that was so successfully used against us. I believe they are using Russian satellites, as well,” Avery said.
“Well, somebody did it. ’At’s really all ’at matters ta me.”
Sam turned to me and asked, “What if ’em Russkies killed ’em fellers?”
“That is very interesting, Sam,” Avery said, some surprise hinted by the unusual pitch in his voice. He then slunk back into his seat and concentrated on the phone.
“Either way,” I said, “him dying was a big deal.”
“’Cause we got the phone?”
“That too.” I gathered the rest of my thoughts. “It created a power vacuum. Even if it isn’t going to have an effect outside of Barrow, we caused the bastards to fight each other. Anytime we can do that and cause them any amount of discomfort, it’s a good thing.”
Sam nodded. “Fuck ’em.”
The alarm I set on the GPS went off. “Ten miles until Tesoro gas station.”
A red low gas light indicator began to glow. “We’ll make it.”
“The damn thing said we had thirty miles ta empty ’bout ten minutes ago. Now it says five,” Sam said.
“We’ll make it.”
“You ain’t very good at math, son.”
“Those things are never accurate,” I pointed out.