Read 1632 for Free Online

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