Alpha Adventures: First Three Novels

by K. T. Tomb

  “Looking for the number,” Travis mumbled.

  Gaston just raised his eyebrows. When Travis scrolled to the final picture, something on the page in the photograph hit him like a lightning bolt.

  I know who did it, Travis thought. It was right there—a driver with the name of a family that had been put out of business all those years ago!

  Travis dialed a number.

  “Travis?” the voice on the other end said. “Thank God, we were starting to worry…”

  “It’s Franz Faber,” Travis said, cutting off Thyri. “He was one of the drivers—I don’t have time now, but that’s who took the vases and…”

  Gaston grabbed the phone out of Travis’ hand.

  “Travis has to go now,” he said into the mouthpiece and hung up. “Well, that was clearly not Mrs. Rodange.”

  “No,” Travis said, hoping his next sentence would give Adam a dose of extra courage. “It was Thyri Ragnarsson.”

  “I have to say, I am very displeased.”

  Gaston stalked off. The lights went off in the room and silence enveloped them. Just as Travis was starting to worry that someone else was going to come in to finish them off, the lights flickered back on, and Gaston was standing there, looking less than happy.

  “You know what, gentlemen? That’s quite enough,” he said with a deep sigh. “I don’t need ownership of the vases, I just need them to be retrieved and returned to one of the rightful owners. This whole situation has become so much more dire than anyone involved could possibly conceive and it’s exhausting me.”

  Gaston leaned against the wall opposite Adam and Travis and slid down it until he was seated on the ground. He looked completely defeated and gripped by desperation.

  “The reason my ancestor and his business partners put the Fabers out of business was because they found out the profits from Faber’s publications were, in part, fueling the rising political career of an unknown German activist named Adolph Hitler. They knew what the man stood for and the propaganda that he and his underground society were trying to spread through the country. They also knew they had to put a stop to it. So fine, I don’t need the vases, we just need to get them back into the hands of one of the original owners. The Fabers have them now and who knows what those crazy sons of bitches would do with the money those vases could bring.”

  Every line of Travis and Adam’s faces was etched in amazement as Gaston freed them from their bonds. He even helped them up and when Adam stumbled due to the lack of circulation in his feet, it was Gaston who grabbed him and prevented a fall down the stairs.

  “I’ve had your car pulled around front for you both,” Gaston said. “You can go wherever you need to be next, but there’s a catch.” And with a mischievous glimmer in his eye, Gaston pulled on his coat. “I’m going with you.”

  Neither Adam nor Travis had the ability to say no, so relieved were they to be free.

  “Besides,” Gaston said, chuckling, “I just want to help at this point, so I’m not going with you just to keep an eye on you.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Savannah, are you sure this is a good idea?” Thyri whispered.

  “No,” Savannah retorted, “I’m not, but it’s the only solid thing we’ve got to go on. This is where the file says Faber lives, and this is where I’m sure he’s got the vases. It’s not a huge place—it shouldn’t be that hard to find them. And it’s far enough away from everything else that he could keep that other driver hostage and no one would hear him.”

  With that, the two women finished their argument and resumed their stakeout. The plan was to wait until he left, jump the fence and break into the house. They would find the vases and hopefully the other driver and get out before Franz got back.

  It was risky.

  They had no idea what Franz’ schedule was like and seeing as how he was supposed to be missing, they had no way of knowing how long he might be gone. To top off their hare-brained scheme, they had not been able to get a hold of Travis or Adam, who were presumably being held prisoner at the Gaston Estate. A couple of hours passed, and then a man appeared. A man who roughly fit the description noted in Faber’s employment file. He had on a hat and was carrying an umbrella, which he held low over his face to protect him from the relentless sleeting rain that had been falling all day.

  “Damn,” Savannah swore. The man had been followed out into his fenced front yard by a pair of enormous Rottweilers. “Those can’t be there just for show,” she said.

  “No, probably not,” Thyri said dejectedly. “I would hate to have to hurt a dog, but I suppose we do what we need to do.”

  They waited another ten minutes, then got out of the car and walked around the block once; which was made up entirely of the Faber home, yard and vegetable garden. At this time of year, nothing was growing. As soon as Thyri’s feet touched the ground, they heard barking and snarling, and the dogs were charging them. Thinking quickly, Savannah threw a couple of peppered jerky sticks at them, which the dogs promptly fell on.

  “What?” she said as they skirted around the dogs, giving them a wide berth. “I love peppered jerky. The pepper won’t kill them; just give ‘em a bit of a tummy ache.”

  Thyri just shook her head. They made their way to the front door, which was surprisingly unlocked.

  “I guess he trusts the dogs over there to keep this place secure,” Savannah chuckled.

  They quickly searched the first two floors of the house; noticing a number of things that would have caught Adam’s fancy.

  “What a collection this guy has in here,” Savannah said. “I don’t know what half this stuff is, but I know antiques when I see them.”

  “Savannah,” Thyri said in a quivering voice, “we need to find those vases and get out of here.”

  “What’s wrong?” Savannah asked immediately.

  “This stuff in here, I know most of it. Or rather, I know about it.”

  “What do you mean?” Savannah responded.

  “I mean, all of these are stolen. Absolutely all of it. We’re dealing with someone who’s far more interested in collecting this stuff than we thought. Let’s go,” Thyri said, and the girls made for the main floor. They opened a few doors, and finally were rewarded with stairs leading down. They followed them, turning on lights as they went.

  The basement was a wide open expanse, partly finished and crammed full of wooden shipping crates. The girls were puzzled, until they opened a few of them, and found a number of other valuable antiques.

  “This statue of Zeus,” Thyri pointed out as she lifted a lid off of yet another shipping crate, “this is one of the oldest statues in existence. It was previously owned by the Prince of Monaco. It was part of his private collection of antiquities.”

  She was breathless.

  Finally, she heard Savannah exclaim, “GOTCHA!” and she came back to the center of the room with a clear, Swarovski crystal vase with the Liebowitz family crest unmistakably carved into the front of it. “Check it out Thyri. We can grab the other two and get outta here. That other driver, Simon I think it was; he isn’t here.”

  “Ok, show me where you found that, and let’s get them and go,” Thyri said.

  Savannah led her over to one of the packing crates, and Thyri opened it. The beautiful crystal was nestled in hard packaging foam that had been molded especially for each vessel. She picked another of the vases up, and looked at it closely, put it back, and sighed.

  “What?” Savannah asked. “What’s wrong now?”

  “These aren’t them,” Thyri stated sadly. “One is supposed to be clear. One is supposed to be pink—”

  “And the other is supposed to be light blue,” a cold, calculating male voice said from the shadows.

  Franz Faber stepped out into the light.

  “Good evening girls. I suspected someone would find these eventually—and you were so close. By the way, what did you do to my dogs? They’re howling up a storm up there.”

  “Peppered jerky,” Savannah said cooll
y.

  “Ah yes, I should have guessed,” he said, his smile never reaching his eyes.

  It was then that Thyri noticed the nine millimeter in Franz’ hand and the silencer screwed snugly into the barrel.

  “I was hoping it would be Liebowitz I caught down here,” Franz said to no one in particular. “But I suppose the two of you will have to do… for now. You will both make an excellent addition to the sale I’ve just negotiated. Don’t get too comfortable.”

  With that, he reached up, tugged on a rope, and a cage made of iron descended with a crash, right around the girls. They were trapped.

  “Toodle-oo,” Franz said and made his way toward the stairs.

  “Wait,” Savannah said. “What did you do with Simon? At least tell us that much!”

  She was desperate to keep him talking. She hoped she could lure him close enough to try something and maybe turn the tables, but Franz was too smart for that. He stopped just outside Savannah’s reach.

  “Simon will fetch a handsome price on the black market. Young men that look like him typically go for a couple million Euros, easy,” he said, laughing insanely. “Him being military trained and all too… he’ll make a good cage fighter or something.”

  “You’re going to sell Simon into slavery?” Thyri was outraged and disgusted.

  “Uhm… NO!” Franz cackled. “I’m going to sell the three of you into slavery! You two are very pretty. I know a Saudi prince that will pay me a BUNCH of money for two beautiful American women he can entertain his business associates with. Speaking of which, I need to make a phone call.”

  He gestured at the women with his gun, indicating that they should give him their cell phones.

  “If you have all of this,” Savannah said, trying to control her temper, “why work for the security firm at all?”

  “A fair question,” Franz replied. “And since you’re not going anywhere, I’ll tell you. The security firm provided me with a number of things, but most importantly, they provided information. What is the best way to find antiques worth their weight in gold? Find out where they are, who owns them, and then move them around for them. If it were you, would you ever bother having an antique re-appraised after it was transported? No. You trust the security company to do their job. I bring the real thing here, have it masterfully re-created, and deliver the client their fake, and no one is the wiser. I’ve had my eye on the Swarovskis for a while though. And Rodange is smart—she doesn’t trust many people. That’s why I had to have a second driver in the car with me. So what did I do? Fake my own kidnapping, of course. Then, I’ll turn up a few weeks later, battered, bruised and dehydrated, say a lunatic kidnapped me and Simon, and tried to sell us into slavery. Pretty genius, huh?”

  And with that, he turned and left the two women in the dark. Savannah began to shake.

  “Thyri, we need to think of something. I will NOT be a slave to some… some… philandering Middle Eastern son of a bitch!”

  “Don’t worry—we’ll get out of this,” she said, and pulled out James’ phone.

  “Holy shit, you’re a genius.”

  Savannah was encouraged by Thyri’s forethought.

  “Never hurts to have a spare,” Thyri said and promptly called Liebowitz. The reception was spotty, but she managed to relay her location, their predicament, and who was behind the heist to Monsieur Liebowitz.

  “He’s sending James to come and get us out of here,” Thyri said.

  “Let me call Trav,” Savannah said.

  Thyri smiled and passed the phone to Savannah. She relayed a similar message to Travis, and added that she did not know where Faber was going; only that he had taken the original vases with him, and he was probably headed for the same secure location that he had mentioned Simon was being held at.

  Chapter Ten

  “Ok,” Travis said. “Ok, I got it. Yup, we’ll figure it out. Ok. Be careful. Yup, we will. Thanks, Sav, bye.”

  “Was that Savannah?” Adam asked from the back seat.

  “Yeah,” Travis replied over his shoulder.

  “Savannah?” Gaston asked from the driver’s seat.

  “One of the people on our team. She and Thyri were checking out the Liebowitz family.” Adam quickly filled Lucas in on what each group had been doing.

  “I still can’t believe it’s the Fabers—I mean I can—I just thought they gave up on this a long time ago,” Lucas said again.

  “Well, apparently not. Look, Thyri and Savannah are going to be… occupied… for a while. Where else could Franz go?” Travis asked Gaston urgently.

  “There’s only one place I can think of. I came across it a few times in my research. They used to own about twenty hectares in the lake country. They have a house up there and it’s close enough to a couple of deep rivers that a small ship could get there and back to the sea with little trouble. I bet that’s where he’s got the other driver, and I bet that’s where he’s got the vases.”

  “Ok, I’m in,” Travis said, and looked back at Adam for confirmation.

  “Yeah, I am too,” Adam said. “Gun it,” he added.

  “You got it, boys,” Gaston said and slammed on the gas. “Here,” Gaston added, passing a phone to Travis. “Look up ‘Faber’ and ‘Property’ and ‘Lake Country’ and ‘Luxembourg’. It should be third or fourth in the search results.”

  “Got it,” Travis said.

  “Good,” Gaston replied. “Punch it into the GPS.”

  They were getting closer by the second—the Luxembourg lake country was along the northeastern border that Luxembourg shared with France.

  Gaston looked at the GPS, and said, “We should be there in fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  “That may not be enough time!” Adam exclaimed. “We could miss him!”

  Gaston did not respond, but put an even heavier foot on the gas. Travis involuntarily reached up and grabbed what he fondly thought of as the ‘oh-shit’ handle above the passenger side window. The car screamed forward into the dark night, its headlights chasing shadows across the rapidly moving scenery. Travis took out his own phone, copy and pasted the number Savannah had called him from into the “send to” field of a text message, and relayed to her the address for the Faber lake house, hoping their rescuer would not be too late to get them there.

  Chapter Eleven

  The three men got out of the car as silently as they could and surveyed the grounds in front of them. The house was old—built mostly out of stone—but the roof looked new, and the windows and security system were definitely new additions as well. Travis started to give Lucas and Adam the game plan, but before he could get much into it, Lucas opened the back of the SUV and flipped up the cover to a hidden storage compartment underneath.

  “Damn,” he swore. “I thought I told them to put those guns back in here after they were done at the shooting range. Idiots. Well, nothing we can do about that. Here you go, boys, put these on. This dude is crazier than we think.”

  Lucas held out three Kevlar vests, putting one on himself and offering the other two to Adam and Travis.

  “Make sure you strap them on tight,” he whispered. “They only work well if your body helps absorb some of the impact if you get shot. Otherwise…” and he trailed off ominously.

  Thank God someone out there is prepared when we have to face down lunatics, Travis thought. He could literally have jumped for joy seeing the bulletproof vests. I’ve got to do something about this paranoia.

  “Okay,” Travis said, “here’s the game plan, best as I can figure it. Lucas, I want you to scoot down to that boathouse over there,” Travis indicated one of the buildings on the waterfront, “and hide in one of the boats. If there’s only one in there, don’t give yourself away for a stupid reason, but do your best to get us a ride if we need one. Adam, you and I are going after Faber. My guess is he’s in the house, so Lucas, before you head down to the boats, I want you to throw a rock through that front window. Make it look like I did it. Adam, you’re gonna be on the back side of
the house, waiting in case Faber runs instead of comes at me. Just do your best to slow him down, but same thing. Don’t get killed trying to be a hero. Ready?”

  With that, they put their plan in motion. They had not been able to find the girls, but they knew they were around somewhere because they had noticed another car abandoned along the drive. There was no way that Franz had walked up to the house, so they assumed it was left there by Thyri, Savannah, and the man whose name had sounded something like James.

  The first rock Lucas threw almost ended up hitting Travis, so Travis just motioned him toward the boathouse, and picked up the rock himself, and threw it point blank through the front window. The entire place lit up—flood lights went on everywhere, and sirens started screeching in the night.

  Faber immediately appeared from somewhere in the house, saw Travis standing there coolly, and went into a rage. He approached quickly and dropped into a fighter’s stance. Travis followed his lead trying to anticipate how Faber would attack. The assault Faber threw at Travis was devastating. He took a number of blows to the head, neck, and legs before he even knew what was happening. He got a moment’s reprieve when Faber made the mistake and struck him in the chest. The blow was so hard Travis thought he felt a few of the ceramic plates crack, but he swiftly grabbed Faber’s wrist and tried to twist him into a submission hold. Faber slithered out of it and landed a number of painful blows to Travis’ hamstrings. Faber quickly figured out the exact dimensions of Travis’ vest and as fast as Travis was, he could not keep up with Faber’s technique.

  This guy could be world class MMA, Travis thought to himself, barely managing to avoid a blow that surely would have crushed his eye through the back of his head.

  A shadow streaked out of the darkness and feebly tried to drag Faber to the ground. Faber executed a neat double-leg sweep, landed on top of the victim, and blasted the unfortunate soul in the nose with the heel of his hand. Travis heard a crunch and a squeal, and knew Adam’s nose had been broken. Travis tried to sneak up behind Faber, but was rewarded with an elbow to the gut, followed in quick succession by snap-kicks to the side of the head. Despite his nausea, Travis had been expecting something like that, and managed to block one of the two kicks. He was down and dazed and Adam could barely see. As he staggered, he saw Faber run off the end of the dock, leap and land in a boat that had been tied to the end of the dock. He heard the sound of the motor, and saw the boat take off. Shortly after, a second boat was in pursuit, and he thought he could make out two sets of flowing hair being tossed around in the breeze created by the speed of the boats.