Lucifer's Luncheonette

Lucifer's Luncheonette

At times it was like I was in a Sci-Fi movie. If that were the case, then I suppose all of my beliefs about my country wouldn't have been shattered. I worked for the United States government in a top-secret program call Stop-23, developing what I believed to be nuclear defense systems. Oh, how wrong I was...

Chapter One: Capture

I couldn't believe that I was sitting in a cramped cargo hold of a Bolivian transport ship, having bribed the captain so that a Russian scientist, Saira, and myself could hitch a ride to Bolivia from Easter Isle, the base of Stop-23.

"Erin," Saira said. "I think we're about to dock somewhere." Her accent was thin and she spoke English fluently, so it was easy for me to understand her.

"What makes you say that?" I asked. I was a little concerned because we'd only been on the boat for about a day, and it was a trip of several days to Bolivia.

"Just listen," she said, holding a finger to her lips. She had caught onto American customs pretty quickly. "Don't you hear it?" She clutched a little bag full of CDs.

I strained my ears, and I heard people yelling, though what I couldn't tell. "We need to hide," I said, moving boxes and hunkering down as close to the floor as I could.

The effort was futile, because I soon heard voices coming closer and closer to the cargo hold. The big metal door swung open and I ducked behind a box, pulling Saira with me. We watched as several men and women, they looked American, swarmed the space, knocking over boxes and shredding cardboard.

One woman caught sight of us and yelled, “here they are Sir; I’ve found them!” Something was wrong. Amid my panic at being found, I noticed that the accent of the woman wasn't one I could place.

A man of about thirty walked over to us, aiming his gun. "We would like for you two to come with us," he said. I couldn't quite place their accents, but I knew these people weren't Americans, not that it eased the knots in my stomach.

"Come on, get up," he said gruffly, grabbing me by the arm. I wasn't armed, so I did the only thing I could do, I complied.

"Who are you?" I asked, looking as Saira's worried face.

"That's not of importance right now. What is important is that we get you off this boat," he said, pulling me roughly.

I walked with him to the surface of the ship, where he put me into a helicopter, Saira right behind me. The man took Saira's bag and handed it to the woman that had found us, and she held us at gunpoint.

The man took a stack of bills from his pocket and handed them to a man, the captain of the ship that I'd bribed just the day before. I flashed him the one-finger salute, but he didn't seem to understand the gesture.

"Put that down or I'll blow it off," the woman said, nudging me in the chest with her gun. I did. The man that seemed to be in charge climbed into the helicopter, then signaled for the pilot to take off.

"What do you want with us? You're obviously not with the United States Government," I said, placing my hand on Saira's. She squeezed it hard in fear.

"All will be revealed when things are safer," the guy said. My god; was he trying to be a walking stereotype?

About an hour later we landed on a big ship that resembled a Navy tanker, and Saira and I were shepherded into a dark room in the heart of the ship, where we watched over by two guards, neither of who had been on the Bolivian boat. After about an hour, the man from the helicopter walked in with another gentleman, this one about forty, but still in good shape.

"How are we lassies?" The older man said. This accent I could figure out; he was Irish. "Comfortable I hope?"

Saira moved to speak, but I shook my head no at her. Let me handle this, I said with my eyes. She seemed to get the message, because she sat back and kept her mouth shut.

"Eh, so we're playing that way?" The Irishman said. "Maybe a woman would have some better luck, right Kaplan?"

The younger man shifted slightly and nodded, then walked out of the room. For about five minutes it was just the Irishman and I staring at each other, I'm not sure what Saira was doing. Then the other man, Kaplan, walked back in, accompanied by a woman of about twenty-five. She was obviously a grunt.

"Okay, will you talk to Kota here?" The Irishman asked. I just stared at him for a few seconds, then turned to Kaplan, ignoring the girl altogether. “Miss Erin, Miss Saira, what do you say?” The Irishman said. How does he know our names? I thought.

"You said 'all will be revealed' when we got here, so start revealing," I said, staring at Kaplan.

"Well, I'm with the Canadian government, and we've been investigating a US project known as Stop-23. We managed to locate a facility on Easter Island, and with our satellites we watched you two escape." he said.

"What about those two? I know he's not Canadian, but what about her?" I said. Canadian! That's where I knew his accent! I thought to myself.

"They’re with the Irish government, and they've been aiding us in our investigation. We think you two can help us. Now what was going on in there, and why did you need to leave so badly?" he asked.

"First we need our bag; the one took you from us." I told him. He dispatched the woman, "Kota," after our bag, and then told us to start talking.

"How do I know that we can trust you?" I said, narrowing my eyes.

"How do you know if you can trust anyone?" the Irishman asked. His logic made sense, which annoyed me.

"All right, we'll talk, but we're going to get that bag first," I said. Saira looked at me and I nodded to her that we'd be okay.

Kota came in with the bag and threw it at my feet. I picked it up and looked inside, making sure everything was there. "Fine, we'll talk," I said. "Saira, you tell them, you were there longer."

Saira nervously cleared her throat and hunched her back. “I was in Lakjia, a small village in Ukraine, and I was studying the effect of prolonged exposure to nuclear radiation on medium-sized mammals: dogs, monkeys, and cats; that type of group.

"One evening I was in the office when some men in black garb broke in and kidnapped me. I think I might've been drugged after that, because after that all I can remember is being in Stop-23."

She looked to me and I motioned for her to continue. "I was literally forced to work on various experiments involving nuclear power and chimpanzees. I wasn't sure what all of the studies were for until I met Erin here. That was about three months ago.

“She said that we were developing a nuclear defense system for the US, and told me that she was glad to see that other nations were sending their best and brightest to help them.

"When I told her that I had been kidnapped, she turned pale and told me that she didn't believe me," Saira stopped, "do you want to finish, Erin?" she asked.

I nodded and then turned to find everyone staring at me. I'd never been good at public speaking, and this was even worse. "I checked the computer records and found that we weren't building a defense system, but rather, a new kind of nuclear weapon," I said.

"What kind of weapon?" Kaplan asked. I looked over to the two Irishmen, wondering why they were still there; they weren’t doing anything.

"Is this room sealed?" I asked.

"Should be, it's surrounded by twelve feet of solid lead, and the only exit and entrance is through that door, which is one foot of solid steel, It takes two men, at least, to close it." Kaplan said. “It’s bug-proof.”

"All right, if you say it's bug-proof," I said. "They want to develop a type of nuclear weapon that mutates the human brain and turns people into merciless killing machines in the hope that they'll wipe each other out."

"Shit!" Kota said, holding her radio up to her ear. She looked at Saira and asked her how far they'd gotten on the development.

“Pretty far, we’d perfected its effects on apes, and they were making the adjustments to humans when we took off, why?” she asked.

"Because we've got an unknown type of missile headed right toward the ship."

"How long until it reaches us?" Kaplan asked.

"Five minutes." Kota said.

Tell the guards to sound the alarm and then lock the door. If that is a nuclear weapon, then it shouldn't be able to get through here,” the Irishman said. I wished he'd say his name.

Kota tried her radio, but all she could get was static. “Damn! It was just working!”

“It’s nuclear interference,” Saira said quietly.

Kota and Kaplan struggled with the door until they got it open enough to tell the guards outside to sound the alarm, then they closed it with the help of the Irishman. Then Kota locked it.

Kaplan walked over to a wall and slid a panel I hadn't noticed before, revealing a state of the art laptop computer. He turned it on and brought up a window of a streaming video of the upper levels of a ship; that ship.

"Okay, all we can do now is wait," Kaplan said, running his hand across the gun at his side. Kota pulled hers out, and the Irishman just stood there.

"What are you doing?" Saira asked Kota.

"You said that nuclear weapon thing you two helped build turns people into killing machines. I just wanted to have one too," Kota said, rubbing her gun with her left hand.

We sat and waited, then watched as the missile headed toward the boat. We felt it hitting the boat before we saw it on the computer. The computer screen went blank, and Kaplan couldn't get it to reload. "Shit!" he said.

"Let me try," Saira said, stepping up to the computer. "I am a nuclear physicist, after all."

Kaplan stood aside and let Saira do her thing while the rest of us got more and more nervous. "How long does this radiation stuff last?" Kota asked me.

"It lasts about fifteen minutes, and then dissipates. Any exposure to it is permanent, though. It's supposed to be very efficient."

Kota looked at her watch. "Shit! It's only been a few minutes, and we're sitting ducks."

"Erin, you might want to look at this." Saira said. I walked over to the computer and couldn't believe what I saw on the screen.