A metal sign, covered in repeated deposits of hoar frost, stood leaning at a forty-five degree angle. Its terse words were barely legible should anyone try to read them. ALYESKA MINING UNAUTHOIZED PERSONNEL KEEP OUT The flickering lights of the aurora illuminated a small concrete-block building fifty yards away. It had no windows but only a single metal door with an attached sign warning of dangerous high voltages inside. It looked as if the building hadn’t been entered in years, and it would be natural for anyone foolish enough to venture out on this night, with temperatures approaching minus sixty degrees Fahrenheit, that this was indeed the case. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. The building was in frequent use by clandestine visitors to the headquarters of Project Omega. This small, innocuous building was not what it seemed. When one entered the building there were no high voltage devices to be seen; there was only a large metal hatch, like one might see on a submarine, in the exact middle of the floor, and below this hatch there was an elevator. The elevator regularly transported visitors downward to a depth of 150 feet below the surface where an underground command center had been built in 1961 in the days of mistrust between the United States and the Soviet Union. It had been called the Cold War. Originally planned as a backup facility in case the NORAD command center at Cheyenne Mountain was destroyed by a Soviet attack, the facility was now the headquarters of the Top Secret, joint Army/Air Force project office code-named Omega.
