Part Seven: Forever May Not Be Long Enough

There was nothing worse than being roused from your bed in the middle of the night and forced out into the darkness of a frightening, foreign land. Nigel and Sydney had no clue what was going to happen next as they hurriedly gathered their belongings and disappeared down the deserted streets of Istanbul to some undisclosed destination. This was particularly horrifying for Nigel. He couldn’t help but be reminded of the night his parents were killed. The shock of being awakened in the wee hours to such terrible news was all too uncomfortably close once again. That uneasy feeling of dread, emptiness, uncertainty and lastly, the feeling that he would never be safe again resurfaced like a bad dream. A light film of anxious perspiration blanketed his skin as he, Sydney and Aaron piled into an old German sedan and drove off in a spray of gravel and dust.

"Aaron, care to share your thoughts on this sudden evacuation? I feel like I’m running for my life! What the hell is going on here"" Sydney loudly demanded from the back seat, doing everything in her power not to knock his block off.

Aaron’s expression was steeled, keeping his gun on his lap as he continued onward. "If you feel like we’re running for our lives, then we are Sydney, we are. I was tipped off that we’re being watched, that means we have to be on the move before they know we’re missing!" Looking into the rear view mirror he caught Sydney’s dark, anxious eyes. "I refuse to lead the damned Turkish government to the Ark!"

"What? We’re being followed by the authorities?" Nigel gasped and turned to Sydney, for what he didn’t know, because she had the same puzzled look as well. Just the thought of being thrown into a Turkish jail gave him hives. "Are you saying they’ll kill us?" Indiana Aaron didn’t seem all that funny anymore...

"Before you can ask them why, Nigel my boy...They don’t want that Ark found, we know where it is, and they’ll do anything to keep it lost forever! Forever may not even be long enough for these boys." He reached down between his legs and just under the seat. "Here." Tossing a loaded three fifty-one Magnum in Nigel’s lap, he sighed. "Ever use one of those?"

"Good God!" Nigel almost crawled out of his skin. "No!"

"Okay, here’s the poop... someone tries to kill us, you shoot to kill them first, got it?"

"No, I’m not shooting anything!" Nigel ardently resisted, staring at the heavy object still resting on his lap.

"You can die if you want kid, but refuse to die for you!" Aaron sounded almost evil, like Satan himself, and glared at the younger man. "You will pick up that gun, and you WILL use it. Do you understand me?"

Nigel swallowed hard and meekly nodded in agreement at the large menacing man to his right. Slipping his nervous fingers around the cold, hard steel of the weapon, he held it off to the side, waiting for Aaron to bark more orders, but none were forthcoming.

Sydney was dumbfounded. This was not the Aaron Deleany she knew. Something had happened, and what ever it was, it seriously affected the way he was behaving. "Aaron, where are we going?" She asked him, trying to hide the rising panic in her voice. "Please, this is crazy!"

"We’re going to see a friend of mine, he’ll be able to get us out of the area safely, and hopefully untracked. I assume you have a weapon Syd?"

"I have my knife. Don’t even think about telling me I have to have a gun too!"

"No," he smiled for the first time since their rapid departure, "I know you’re more than capable with that."

Go to Part Eight.


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