by Glen Carter
“Hello, Sarah.”
Sarah whipped around. The figure was only a few feet away, cloaked in darkness. How long had he been there? Watching her. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. She wiped away tears and locked arms across her chest.
Billy Rutter stepped into the light, wearing his neatly pressed uniform. Sarah shook off her surprise and assessed him. He was much thinner than the day they left. Hollow cheeks. Eyes that needed a long sleep.
“You weren’t at the funeral,” she said, curtly.
“I couldn’t help it, Sarah.”
What was more important than Kallum’s funeral?
“There was a debriefing,” Rutter said. “Those military intelligence guys are like pit bulls. They never let go. I just got home. I’m so sorry.”
Sarah turned away.
“If there’s anything I can do.”
“Tell me what happened to my husband.”
Rutter began to speak.
After a moment, Sarah shook her head. It was too much to hear. She wanted to walk over and slap him right in the face.
“Sometimes, Sarah,” Rutter pleaded, “men do things when the bullets are flying that they’d never imagine. It goes both ways on the bravery meter.”
“Kallum would never have done that.”
“It doesn’t matter what Kallum did. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a hero for his sacrifice.”
“Is that what you told those guys at military intelligence?”
“Yes Sarah. It was. But I had a duty. I’ll understand if you hate me for that.”
“You’re here and he’s not. That’s what I hate.”
Billy had nothing more to say.
Sarah turned to the sea, with no room in her heart for the anger she felt. Not with her love for Kallum. Billy had survived with his own demons. Seeing his friend murdered, then having to fight his way out of a brutal Iraqi fortress. Thank God for the men who risked their own lives to bring him home. To bring all of them home. Billy was a wounded warrior. That, she couldn’t deny. He was Kallum’s friend, for many years beyond her own. Slowly, Sarah walked to him. Without a word, she wrapped her arms around him and drew him close, and in that one act, she granted Billy Rutter the forgiveness he would never deserve.
Samuel Bolt, the Man
Twenty-five Years Later
8
Las Vegas, Nevada
Samuel Bolt’s pockets were stuffed with money. Wads of it. Folded and rolled, in twenties and fifties. It had weight, and if you looked closely, there were bulges at the front of his jeans. He was not feeling cocksure, and there was no swagger in his walk. He was a nobody, his face shadowed within a thrift shop hoodie, trying to stay invisible.
Midnight and the sidewalk was alive. All neon and raw energy. Bolt’s eyes were everywhere at once. He checked his shoulder for the umpteenth time because, in this part of town, paranoia had currency. Stupid was a big fat zero. Nonchalantly, he studied a storefront window. In the reflection, a guy was staring in his direction, swaying on the other side of the street with a ridiculous liquor bong hanging to his belt. He stumbled off.
Feeling easier, Bolt got moving.
The alley was just ahead, away from the flashing signs promising liquor and naked girls. He took a few more steps, checked his shoulder once more, and eased into the darkness. They’d be frightened. And with good reason. They’d all suffered the fists and boots of strangers. Random, like the rats that scurried past their feet. A few heads popped up from behind blankets and cardboard. Faces raised to a sliver of moonlight. Bolt counted the heaps and decided this would be his last stop tonight. He stepped to one of the bundles. Knelt carefully. “How are you, friend?”
“I got nothing. Leave me the fuck alone.” The voice was like crust, his face a mess of caked blood. “I got a knife. You don’t haul back, you’ll get it right to the guts.”
Bolt slid his shoe to pin the edge of the blanket. Shit could happen fast in places like this. Slowly, he reached inside his pocket and withdrew a fistful of bills. Held it out in the light. “Get a room. Some decent food.”
The man’s eyes went wide. “What you want, mister?”
Bolt ignored it. He placed the cash into the folds of the blanket. “There’s a clinic a block up. Your face needs stitches.”
The man grabbed the money and stuffed it into an army boot.
So many of these guys were veterans. It was a shame. “Where’d you serve?”
“Afghanistan. Two tours,” the face replied.
Bolt wondered if he’d re-upped for the easy heroin. He eyed the guy’s boot stash.
“Don’t worry, mister. God keeps me clean.”
Bolt had no right to judge. He was no better and no worse. He pulled a pamphlet from his pocket and tucked that into the blanket, too. “Get to this place,” he said. “They’re good people.”
“Like you, mister. A real saint.”
Bolt turned his attention to the next heap, pulled himself up, and headed in that direction. Before long, all the money would be gone. Then he’d go back the way he came. Bolt had lost track of the number of little trips he’d made with his pockets full of money. He didn’t feel like a saint, or anything like that.
An hour later, on the other side of town, he stood perfectly still at the tunnel entrance, invisible in the darkness, which at that moment he preferred. A few feet away, head down and oblivious, a man stumbled into the portal. Without a sound, he vanished, as the others had, in their filthy clothes, some limping, others mumbling as they vanished beneath the glitzy, soulless hotels.
The overpass at Coral Boulevard was one of several gateways to the subterranean world. Most were unknown, except to the legions of mole people who stumbled along, like little blood clots sluicing through the cold concrete arteries.
As Bolt watched, two people materialized in the dark, pushing a shopping cart. They came from Ohio somewhere, looking for opportunity, found the pipe instead. The tunnels were full of them. With their sad little stories. Victims the minute they left the womb.
Bolt shifted his weight.
“Bolt?”
“How’d it go?”
The cart rattled to a stop. “A hundred bucks goes a long way.”
Bolt glanced into the cart. Boxes and bottles. The staples for a small family. Of three.
The woman held up a box with Lucky Charms. “Lucas loves them.”
Bolt guessed Lucas was safe inside while mom and dad did the grocery shopping. The kid had felt like a sack of twigs when he picked him up that day. The hundred bucks had been a hand up. But the cart was looking a little light. “No milk?”
“Waste of money,” mom said with a shrug. “Doesn’t last half a day without an icebox.”
Bolt spied sugary soda, but no fruit or vegetables. He held his tongue.
The man leaned in to him. “I’ll pay you back, Bolt. When I get on my feet, promise.”
“No worries.”
Mom gave him a quick hug and a peck on the cheek. Then they rolled off.
A bowl of crack would be part of their night, since Bolt was certain half the cash was spent on drugs. “Enjoy your evening,” he said under his breath, watching them disappear into the same opening as the others. He’d also go that way, eventually, maybe stop by to make sure Lucas was all tucked in.
He checked his watch. Drained the water bottle at his side. In a few minutes the Bellagio would fire up its laser show. Down the street, the Eiffel Tower sparkled magnificently, and gondoliers sang romantic ballads along the bogus canals of the Venetian. There were pirate ships and the mysterious pyramids. It was mesmerizing. The pleasure centre of some colossal man-made brain. Bolt soaked up the energy it shed but didn’t care a whit for the phony spectacles. He gazed into the starry heavens, from which God or angels would never descend, and who co
uld blame them?
The tunnels ran for miles beneath the Strip, where the tourists gambled and partied, oblivious to the realm of dispossessed and desperate only metres beneath their feet. Bolt was a tunnel dweller, too. Not because he was drug-addicted or insane, or totally without resources, which he wasn’t, but because he chose to be, just as they had. That was really all he had in common with the mole people. Everyone chose to be here, with the rats, the filth, and the flash floods, for which the tunnels were constructed. “Flushing the toilet,” they called it when the high water swept through.
Bolt took a sweet candy from his pocket and popped it into his mouth, then another. They rattled around his teeth as he took stock of his bare existence. There was no family. Only the orphanage, which he had left as soon as the law allowed and saw the world from the deck of a container ship. He’d been drawn to it, and if he stood still long enough and closed his eyes, he could still feel the roll of the ocean. He had no idea why that lure had been so damn strong, then so faint. Truth was, Samuel Bolt wasn’t sure about much, except that he was young and strong and homeless because he chose to be. There was a lot that he didn’t understand. A priest had once called him an old soul. The kids at the orphanage had other names, like “retard” and “freak.”
The energy was building. Bolt allowed it to pass through his body, like a spillway that shed water before it reached some giant power turbine. In the distance, outside the Bellagio, water and light sliced the sky. The crowd’s thunder rolled to where he was standing. After a moment, when he’d had enough, he sauntered through the gateway into the tunnel. He removed a small flashlight from his pocket and flicked it on. The beam bounced off makeshift homes where people huddled or slept. Most paid him no attention. Not even the Ohio parents of a little boy, who slept cozily while they smoked their crack.
After a few minutes, Bolt reached his place. A small cement alcove off the main tunnel. There was a ladder that ran up one wall to a manhole cover. He had a small bed, neatly made. There were two filing cabinets as dressers and a metal trunk. A small case held a dozen or so books. Nothing had been disturbed, which Bolt was thankful for. He lit two large candles, climbed on the bed, and laid his head on a pillow of rags. How much money had passed through his fingers? He’d lost count. Two months ago, some newspaper reporter had gotten wind of his deeds and had tried to flush him out. But how did you corral a shadow? This nameless hero, spilling his gold and then vanishing into thin air. The story never appeared, thank God. But now, Bolt took extra care on his goodwill sorties.
He wasn’t ready to close his eyes, so he grabbed a book. Something written by a man who was dead a century or so. He liked the author’s rhythm. The symmetry of his sentences. Unfettered by the predictable cadence of modern life. Bolt chuckled quietly. What in the hell was he doing in the most superficial place on the planet, reading literature by a man who would have surrendered his voice, rather than utter a single word, in the language of Bolt’s frivolous world? Bolt had no voice, at least not a voice that mattered. Money gave voice, and if you didn’t have it in this town, you were invisible. Bolt had no problem with that, even though riches were at his fingertips, and in the morning he planned to fill his pockets again.
He stopped at a passage in the book. The words melted away on his warm breath: Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we should have been regarded as madmen—although, perhaps, as madmen of a harmless nature.
Nice one, Mr. Poe.
Somewhere deeper inside the tunnel, someone was sobbing. Sounds carried far in this place. Bolt listened as he always did, blankly. Not because he was some cold-hearted monster, but because the crying was a signal that someone still felt enough to shed tears. Most down here didn’t. Those were the ones he felt sorry for. It was part of the routine of his life. Would he be regarded as a madman for that? Madman of a harmless nature?
Maybe, Bolt thought as he drifted off to sleep.
9
Senator William Rutter was only vaguely aware of the people in the room. He sipped his coffee and stared through the window of his penthouse suite. He traced a long, broad avenue lined by luxurious hotels and calculated the billions in profits they brought their wealthy owners. He felt envy, which was the reason he was standing there. That, as well as power and greed.
He drained his cup and poured another. Newspapers were stacked on a table next to him. He’d read every one, as he did each morning. There was a list of reporters who’d be getting calls. They were the idiots who screwed up quotes or missed the points he was trying to make. His communications chief would point that out firmly, and they’d think twice next time. That was the way you kept the snarling bastards in line. Not unlike a circus trainer with his whip and chair.
Rutter caught a glimpse of the housekeeping girls. Arms full of fresh sheets in the adjoining bedroom. He wondered if they smelled the perfume that his “guest” was wearing last night. The older ones always wore too much. A distraction, Rutter guessed, from their flawed bodies.
He thought about the dinner planned for later that night. Just him and a pair of powerful men. They had more money than they knew what to do with. But they needed more. He would see to that once he became president, but first they’d have to pay with substantial contributions to his campaign.
“Senator?”
Rutter turned. The room was full of people, and it was not yet 7:00 a.m. David Stoffer looked worried. He held the day’s itinerary in one hand and a cellphone in the other. “We have a small problem,” he said.
Rutter held up a hand and spent another few seconds soaking in the view. Then he walked to a couch, followed by his campaign chairman.
“Dixon’s announcing a huge aid package for Louisiana.”
“How bad is it?” Rutter realized in an instant how insensitive it would sound to someone outside this room. Hundreds had been killed by severe flooding. Thousands were homeless.
“Pretty bad,” Stoffer replied. “About sixty billion. And a big cheque for the Army Corps of Engineers.”
“When’s he announcing?”
“Today,” Stoffer replied. “In New Orleans.”
“Can Congress block?”
“It’s already in FEMA’s budget.”
Great. While Dixon rode his white horse to the Big Easy, Rutter would be addressing some Vegas convention of mortgage brokers. It didn’t take a genius to know that a flood-ravaged state made better video than a room full of fat bankers.
“I assume you’re working on it,” said Rutter. “Now, tell me about the polls?”
Stoffer opened a file. “Aggregate numbers are good across the board, except for a downtick in white middle-class women.”
“Random sampling?”
“Yes. Across partisan lines. Registered voters only. There are no problems with your commitments on the drug front, crime in general, and on terrorism, which is always top of the list. You’re strong on all these things, especially terrorism. Dixon can’t shed his perceived weaknesses on that.”
“What about clamping down on Muslims? Deporting some of those radical Imams?”
“That was one of the direct questions. They love it.”
“Then where did the soccer moms go?” asked Rutter. “They’re worried about being raped by scumbag drug addicts or being murdered by some lone-wolf terrorist.”
Stoffer nodded. “They are, yes. But they also want school lunch programs and initiatives for literacy and the homeless.”
Rutter huffed. “We can do that. Maybe I can challenge those mortgage brokers to do the right thing and dump some cash on low-income housing.”
“That’s a start. Leave the rest to me.”
Rutter inspected his cup. Time for a refill. “Just don’t go crazy,” he said. “The base doesn’t give a shit about those bums. I won’t get into bed with those left-wing nutbars.”
“
Understood,” Stoffer replied.
10
Bolt was up before dawn. Dressed and up the ladder. He pushed away the manhole cover and climbed out into the parking garage. He replaced the cover quietly and walked to a door marked employees only. Two knocks, and the door swung open.
“Mornin’, Bolt.” Li’l Ray had soft green eyes and a big toothy smile. He wore blue coveralls. He checked Bolt’s six o’clock. “You’re late.”
“Sorry. Slept in.” Bolt ducked into a small room filled with cleaning supplies and the like. There was space for a table and chairs and a full-sized refrigerator. A flat-screen television was perched on a stack of boxes. There was a bathroom in one corner. The place reeked of bleach and sweat.
Li’l Ray grabbed a mop and bucket. “Bathroom flooded on the thirtieth. Gotta run. Help yourself to breakfast and let yourself out.”
“Have a good day,” Bolt shouted after him.
A minute later, Bolt was naked. The shower was hot and soothing, and for a full ten minutes he allowed himself the luxury of it. He grabbed a towel from a fluffy stack and wiped himself dry. Once dressed, he stepped to the refrigerator and grabbed a container of yogourt and a small bottle of orange juice. There was plenty of both, because Li’l Ray was always foraging around discarded room service trays. That came from living on the street, which Li’l Ray had done for a long time after Iraq. He’d earned a chest full of medals but was illiterate, which no one seemed to care about, since he took orders like a dog and fought like a devil, and that made up for being a “dumb-assed swamp rat” from Mississippi. When Bolt offered, Li’l Ray became a good student, and where southern-fried teachers had failed, Bolt succeeded. Li’l Ray had his high school certificate. He had a job and was paying rent. He owed it all to Bolt.
Bolt twisted the cap on the bottle of orange juice and drained half its contents, then flicked on the TV. The morning news anchors were jabbering away. The screen filled with video of the president stepping down from his helicopter, then huddling with volunteers at a wall of sandbags. No one was smiling. The scene changed suddenly to a row of flooded houses. People in protective clothing were loading bodies aboard a truck. Bolt winced as the camera tightened on the face of a small child, wet with snot and tears as two more corpses were laid atop the others. It was part of the reason he never watched television news. It was so bloody depressing. The anchors returned for a moment, and then more video popped in. A man descending the stairs of an aircraft, waving as he came to the bottom. Secret Service agents surrounded him as he walked to a limousine. The camera zoomed in until there was nothing on the screen but the man’s face.
