Alien Hunter: Underworld by Whitley Strieber Read Free Book Online Page B

Or did they?
    Diana and her team were panicking. They were confused. Had to be.
    He drove on, the lights of his car reflecting back more and more fog, making it so hard to see that he gripped the steering wheel and peered ahead, but he never let the speedometer dip below seventy.
    The fog was dangerous, the night was dangerous, being alone on the highway was dangerous. Worse, he was no longer even close to understanding what he was dealing with, and that was very dangerous.
    About an hour out of Mountainville, the state highway met the interstate. He had to stop for gas, so he also got coffee. The attendant was an Indian man behind bulletproof plastic. He took Flynn’s money and handed out his change, his eyes glazed with sleepy boredom.
    The coffee was old but it was strong, and he drank it methodically as he continued on down the highway.
    He covered the distance to Dayton in just over five hours. It was pushing ten in the morning when he reached Wright-Pat. He was hungry and close to exhaustion, but there was no stopping until these bodies were safely burned.
    He pulled into the first guard post and flashed his badge.
    Nothing happened.
    The guard leaned into the car. “Sir, are you okay?”
    â€œNo, I’m not okay, but I have a legitimate ID, so please let me through.”
    â€œWould you like an escort to the base hospital, sir?”
    â€œOpen the gate, please.”
    Flynn took back his secure ID. It didn’t appear any different from any other USGS Identification Card. On the surface. As it was run through readers in ever-more-secure areas, though, it would grant deeper and deeper access, into places that not even presidents knew about.
    The gate went up and Flynn drove through. Wright-Pat was a big base, the U.S. Air Force’s largest repair and refitting facility, among other things. Among those “other things” was the Air Force Materiel Command, which controlled the warehouse where he was headed.
    It was a low building no different from dozens of others on the base. Thousands of people passed it every day without realizing that, two hundred feet beneath the warehouse’s dull exterior, a supercooled morgue held fourteen alien bodies—including two from Roswell, New Mexico—that had been brought here in the fall of 1947 and had remained here ever since. The bodies were kept at near absolute zero, and were tended remotely by technicians who had no idea what they were keeping cold. Their training informed them that this was a storage area for unstable chemicals, and that if they failed in their duty, a massive explosion could result.
    The building also contained a furnace designed to burn “special materials” at extremely high temperatures. Contrary to popular opinion, classified papers were not burned, but reduced to pulp and recycled. Still, the presence of the burn facility meant there would be plenty of normal traffic, and lots of ordinary material like classified electronics. This would be mixed with any ash that might contain evidence, such as bits of the alien bodies Flynn was about to consign to the flames.
    He pulled the front of the car up to a tall corrugated metal door, then went to the identification pad and punched in his code. A moment later, the door began to clatter up on its chains.
    He backed up to the furnace and waited in the car while airmen put up screens around the vehicle. As soon as he had slid his card through the pad, the facility manager was automatically informed of the security level he required.
    Finally, hidden behind seven-foot-tall flats covered with gray canvas, he got out and went to the intercom. He picked up the handset and asked, “Is it up to temp?”
    The answer was immediate. “Yes, sir.”
    Flynn never took chances. “Are all personnel accounted for?”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œThe entire floor is clear at this time?”
    â€œSir, there’s a work crew repairing the exhaust fan housing on