Eric Flint: 1632

He thrust the problem aside. Later. There were more pressing problems to deal with. Much more pressing.

The plain was heavily wooded, but not so much so that Mike couldn't see one-two-three farmhouses scattered among open fields. One of the farmhouses was not more than a hundred yards away.

Close enough to make out some details…

"Jesus," hissed Frank.

The two farmhouses in the distance were burning fiercely. The one nearby was not. It was a large and rambling structure. Unlike the wood-frame farmhouses which Mike was familiar with, the construction of this one leaned heavily toward stone. Hand-fitted stone, from what Mike could see. If it weren't for the fact that the farmhouse had all the signs of current occupancy-that unmistakably ragged-respectable air of a place where people worked -Mike would have sworn he was looking at a something out of the Middle Ages.

But he didn't spend more than two seconds studying the farmhouse itself. The farmhouse was still being "worked," but not by farmers.

His teeth were clenched. He could sense that Frank, standing next to him, was filled with the same outrage. Mike looked around. All of his miners were on the plain now, standing in a line staring at the scene.

"All right, guys," he said softly. "I count six of the bastards. May be more inside. Three of them are assaulting that poor woman in the yard. The other three-"

He looked back at the horrendous sight. "Don't know exactly what they're doing. I think they've got that guy nailed to his door and they're torturing him."

Slowly, as softly as possible, Frank levered a round into the chamber of his rifle. Despite its incongruity with the suit he was wearing, the action was quietly murderous. "So what's the plan?" he demanded.

Mike spoke through tight jaws. "I'm not actually a cop, when you get right down to it. And we haven't got time anyway to rummage around in Dan's Cherokee looking for handcuffs." He glared at the scene of rape and torture. "So to hell with reading these guys their rights. We're just going to kill them ."

"Sounds good to me," snarled Darryl. "I got no problem with capital punishment. Never did."

"Me neither," growled one of the other miners. Tony Adducci, that was, a beefy man in his early forties. Like many of the miners in the area, Tony was of Italian ancestry, as his complexion and features indicated. "None whatsoever."

Tony, like Mike, was holding a pistol. He reached up with his left hand and quickly removed his tie. Angrily, he thrust it into a pocket. The rest of the miners did likewise with their own. None of them took off their jackets, however. All of them were wearing white shirts and all of them were experienced hunters. Their suit jackets, gray and brown and Navy blue, would make better camouflage. After removing their ties-a bow tie, in Mike's case-the miners simply loosened the top collar buttons. For the first time in their lives, they would "hunt" in their Sunday best, wearing dress shoes instead of boots.

Mike led the way, working toward the farmhouse through a small grove of trees. Birch trees , a part of his mind noted idly. That's odd too . Most of his mind was simply wishing that the slender trees provided more concealment. Fortunately, the criminals at the farmhouse were too preoccupied with their crimes to be paying any attention to the area around them.

The miners got within thirty yards of the house without being spotted. They were now squatting down, hidden in the trees at the very edge of the farm yard. The woman being raped was not more than forty feet away. Mike's eyes shied away from the sight, but his ears still registered her moans.

And the coarse laughs of the men assaulting her. One of them, the man holding her arms to the ground, barked a jeering remark at the man on top of her. The rapist grunted some sort of reply.

Mike couldn't understand the words, but they sounded German. He'd been stationed in Germany for a year, while he'd been in the Army. But he remembered little of the language beyond the essential phrase, ein bier, bitte.

"Those guy are foreigners ," muttered Darryl. The young man's face was tight with anger. " Who do they think they are, coming here and-? "

Mike made a short, curt gesture, commanding silence. He went back to studying the criminals.

All of them wore that same peculiar armor and those weird helmets, although the men assaulting the woman had removed theirs. The discarded gear was lying on the ground nearby. The men torturing the farmer still had their armor and helmets on, but they had stacked their firearms against the wall of the farmhouse. From a distance, the "rifles" looked like the same kind of weapons carried by the two men killed by the police chief.

The helmets and armor reminded Mike of pictures he had seen of old Spanish conquistadores. The helmets were metal pots, basically, with flanges tapering into points toward the front and back. The armor, if he remembered right, was called a cuirass . Steel breast and back plates, tied on with leather strips. Outside of the antique-looking firearms, the only weapons they had in their possession were Swords? Swords?

He looked back at the three men asaulting the woman. They were not wearing swords, but now that Mike knew what to look for he spotted the weapons immediately. The scabbarded blades had been unbuckled and tossed onto the ground near the firearms. Mike had never once in his life considered the practical mechanics of rape, but he could understand why a sword would be awkward. These men, he was suddenly quite certain, were not committing this crime for the first time. There was a relaxed and practiced casualness about their activity.

You are dead men. The thought was grim, final.

He turned his head and whispered in Frank's ear. "You've got the only rifle. Can you take out the bastards at the door? Don't forget, they're wearing armor. Can't go for a body shot."

Mike and Frank stared at the three men torturing the farmer. The heavy door of the house had been opened wide and pressed against the wall. The farmer's wrists were pinned to the door with knives. A man in front of him was digging another knife into the farmer's thigh, while his two companions shouted at him. The shouts, Mike thought, were some kind of interrogation. It seemed a pointless exercise. The farmer was screaming with pain, oblivious to any questions.

"Forty yards?" Frank snorted. "Don't worry about it. A.30-caliber slug in the ass will take anybody down."

Mike nodded. He turned the other way and motioned toward Harry Lefferts. Harry crept up to him.

Mike scowled at the sawed-off double-barreled shotgun in Harry's hands. "Forget that stupid thing. We've got innocent people mixed up with these thugs." He handed Harry the riot gun he'd taken from the Cherokee. "Use this. It's loaded with buckshot. The magazine's full-I already checked. When Frank shoots those guys at the door, you back him up. He's going to be aiming for their legs, on account of the armor. You finish them off after they're down."

Harry nodded. He tucked the sawed-off shotgun under a nearby shrub and took the riot gun. After passing over the additional shotgun shells in his pocket, Mike glanced around at the rest of his men. All of them, like himself, were armed with nothing more than pistols and revolvers.

He decided there was no point in developing any more of a battle plan. Besides I can't bear listening to this any longer.

"Just back me up, guys," he whispered. To Frank: "Don't start shooting till I do."

A second later, Mike rose to his feet and strode out of the trees toward the rapists. He held the revolver in his right hand. His steps were quick, but he was not running. Mike hadn't boxed professionally in years, but the old training and experience had taken over. Steady, steady; don't lose your cool; it's just another fight. A stray, whimsical part of his mind told him how foolish he looked, marching toward mayhem in wingtips and a tuxedo, but he ignored it.