Free Immune by Richard Phillips

by a coolness common to poorly insulated underground spaces. The place probably felt great in the heat of a New Mexico summer day, even at this high altitude. But with the arrival of night and the rapidly dropping temperature, he had become chilled.
    Hell. That was probably why his hands were shaking.
    At the bottom of the ladder, Freddy paused, shining the flashlight around the room. It was about ten feet across and of a similar width and constructed of unpainted concrete blocks. The ceiling was a dozen feet above his head. As he shined the flashlight around the room, Freddy wondered if the beam was getting dimmer. It was probably just his imagination. He was pretty sure he’d changed out the D cell batteries not long ago.
    A steel door in the far wall was closed with yet another dead bolt. To his left, a large metal closet jutted outward into the room. Beside it, a long workbench contained an odd-looking assortment of tools and equipment. It took Freddy a couple of moments to realize what he was looking at. It was an ammunition-reloading workbench, complete with gunpowder scale, reloading dies, and other unfamiliar tools.
    He opened the metal closet doors.
    Holy shit. The bastard had been preparing for World War III. At least a dozen rifles and handguns hung in mounts along the back wall of the gun closet, although several of the racks were now empty.
    Freddy moved to the closed steel door in the far wall. As he got close, he saw that the dead bolt had not been engaged and that the door was open a crack. As he touched the handle, he paused, listening. Nothing. Down here in the concrete underground bunker, the silence was nearly perfect. Even the roar of the wind outside and the creaking of the old house had been completely damped out.
    He tugged. Damn the door was heavy, a blast door. God, it must have been a bitch getting the damn thing down here. It must have been lowered before the ceiling had been constructed.
    Freddy edged inside, directing the flashlight beam at the ground before his feet. The cement floor looked cold, and indeed the chill in this room was worse than in the adjacent one. As it swept the room, the yellow beam of the flashlight revealed walls lined with red candles, a sink, a toilet, and a double bed. There was no other exit and only a six-inch airshaft in the ceiling provided ventilation.
    Ahead, the sink looked filthy. As Freddy moved closer, the reason for the mess became clear. It and the floor around it were splattered with dried blood—lots of it.
    Freddy swung the flashlight toward the bed. The blankets and sheets lay wadded at the end of the stained mattress. A set of chains and cuffs dangled from the steel frame. But it was the sight of the pillow and its pink pillowcase that brought moisture to his eyes. The pillowcase was covered with faint tearstains.
    He moved back over to the sink, looking closely at the splatter pattern on the wall and on the floor. Strange that the blood trail did not extend more than a few feet from this spot. There was no sign that the sick bastard who had done this had bothered to clean it up.
    Once again, Freddy began snapping pictures, pointing the camera by instinct as the bright flashing torched his night vision. Except for his own labored breathing, the only other sound to break the cellar’s stillness was the whine of the Nikon’s auto winder.
    He changed film rolls twice. Then, deciding that he had recorded the scene from every angle, Freddy exited the room. As he readied his camera to capture the details of the weapons room, he froze.
    There on the workbench beside the reloading press lay a journal, the corner of the book jutting out beyond the edge of the bench. Freddy knew he had been a bit distracted, but he was a reporter, a damn good one too. There was no doubt in his mind. That fucking book had not been there ten minutes ago.
     

16
     
    “Shut the door behind you.”
    From his seat at the head of the table in the National Security Agency conference