He eased up on the blade as the sharp tips of the serrations began grazing the cutting board, etching a razor-thin line across the grain of the maple. A few more feather-light strokes—one, two, three—and the dynamite parted. A few shreds of the waxy wrapping clung to the blade, and Satterfield wiped the knife on his leg to brush them off, careful not to snag the denim.
He laid the knife aside and picked up one of the pieces of dynamite, holding it up to the light to inspect the cross-section. The cut was clean, the small zigzags from the blade’s serrations etched neatly in the soft, glistening explosive, which had the consistency and the sheen of sausage. Holding the half stick to his eye, he sighted along it, as if it were the barrel of a weapon; as if he were taking aim at someone or something—something very near in space or time. Then, reaching across the table with his left, he picked up a slender silver cylinder—an electric blasting cap, the size and shape of a firecracker, with a pair of thin, insulated wires projecting from one end. Centering the blunt, wireless end of the cap on the freshly cut face of the dynamite, he pressed, twisting slightly. As the cap penetrated, Satterfield felt a thrill, as he always did when handling dynamite. The very name—coined by Alfred Nobel himself, from the Greek word “dynamis”—meant “power.” Nobel was a man who understood power—destructive power—and devoted decades to mastering it. Satterfield considered him a role model: a man who’d triumphed through intelligence, vision, and sheer will.
Satterfield pushed back from the kitchen table and stood, then walked into the den and settled into the leather recliner in the center of the room, facing the television. A slight movement caught his eye; in the wire-mesh terrarium, the broad, triangular head of the snake had swiveled in his direction, and the black ribbon of tongue was testing the air, tasting his presence in the room. As the snake’s unblinking, ancient eyes watched, Satterfield lifted the half stick of dynamite and stared at it, then opened his jaws and took it in, wrapping his lips around it as it slid across his tongue and deep into his mouth. When he felt it against the back of his throat, he closed his eyes and lifted his other hand to his face. Clasped them both across his mouth, he imagined the force that would be unleashed when the current raced from the 9-volt battery into the blasting cap, the cap’s small explosion setting off the dynamite’s large one.
This wasn’t how he’d planned or wanted it to end: forced into a corner, his back to the wall. Still, he had to admit, there was relief in knowing that it would be over soon. And there was power in ending things on his own terms; on terms that were—to borrow Nobel’s word—dynamic.
CHAPTER 41
Decker
“LIEUTENANT! WE’VE GOT A vehicle passing our position, headed toward the house.” The voice, from a spotter positioned at the mouth of the dead-end road, was an urgent whisper in his earpiece, and Lt. Brian Decker, commander of KPD’s SWAT team, snapped to alertness.
“Vehicle’s approaching the suspect’s residence,” added a second voice a half-minute later. Even through the tiny, tinny speaker, there was no mistaking the tension in the whisper from McElroy, the spotter watching the front of the Satterfield house. “Turning into the driveway.”
Decker held up a hand, and the air around him grew electric, the slack boredom on the men’s faces replaced by nervousness and excitement. Like all the men in the SWAT unit, Decker detested waiting—not just because he preferred action, but because waiting dulled a man’s edge, and a dull edge was more dangerous than a sharp one. Decker’s men—two teams, a primary and an emergency, plus a couple of snipers with scoped rifles—had slipped into their positions at 11:00 A.M., expecting to serve the high-risk warrant and take the suspect into custody by noon; one, at the latest. The five-man Primary Team, which would execute the takedown plan once the warrant was signed, lay concealed in the woods just across the road from the residence. Decker and the four others on the Emergency Reactionary Team had crept into closer positions, in the bushes at the east end of the house, so they could storm the front door if the situation suddenly went to shit for some reason.