By and large, Decker’s SWAT team members were built like linebackers and shorn like soldiers: muscled but not fat; clean-shaven, most of them sporting crew cuts and flattops. If there was a mustache or beard anywhere, I didn’t see it. Clearly they took their physical training seriously, which made sense, given the heavy thuddings and clankings of their bulletproof vests and high-powered weaponry.
If I hadn’t known the target to be a lone wolf, I’d have thought the team was about to invade a third world country. Fifteen or twenty men in fatigues and vests were milling about—it was hard to count accurately, as they were coming and going between KPD’s basement and a small fleet of vehicles, lugging equipment and an astonishing assortment of weaponry. I saw short-barreled shotguns, long-barreled sniper rifles, military-style automatic assault rifles, belts of machine-gun ammunition, and what appeared to be a cross between a 1920s Tommy gun and the world’s biggest six-shooter, which Decker appeared to be loading with the world’s largest bullets. “What the hell is that?” I asked. “It looks like something Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis might use in a Hollywood shoot-’em-up.”
He grinned happily. “It’s a forty-millimeter grenade launcher.”
“Grenades? Jesus, Deck. You guys don’t mess around, do you?”
“We don’t,” he said, “but we’re not using it to fire fragmentation grenades.” Was I imagining it, or was there a trace of wistfulness in his voice? “It’s the kinder, gentler grenade launcher. Tear gas or pepper powder or foam batons or distractants.”
“Distractants?”
“Flashbangs. Stun grenades.” He flipped open the weapon’s rotary cylinder, then slid one of the cartoonishly big shells from its chamber and handed it to me. It was three inches long and nearly two inches in diameter. “It’s got a one-and-a-half-second delay. Shoot it through a window, and bam, it goes off with enough noise and light and shock wave to disorient the bad guy for about five seconds.” I nodded; I knew—from a narrow-escape personal experience several years before—what a blinding, deafening punch a stun grenade packed.
I carefully handed it back to him, and he reloaded it, flipped the cylinder back into place, and laid the weapon in the back of his truck, atop a heap of other weapons of various sizes and shapes. Amid the blocky, angular black guns, I noticed an odd outlier nestled against the wheel well. A softly lustrous silver, it appeared scuffed and old—antique, almost, yet also futuristic, like some nineteenth-century imagining of a twentieth-century weapon. I pointed at it. “What’s that one? That looks almost like it should be in a museum.”
“It should be.” He reached in, hauled it out, and held it up, grinning. “It’s an M3 submachine gun. From World War II. Better known as a grease gun.”
“That’s a grease gun?” He nodded. I peered at the weapon. It had a pistol grip, a stubby barrel, a long ammunition clip, and a bare-bones shoulder stock, if stock was the right word for a U-shaped length of quarter-inch steel rod. The gun’s central feature, to which all these components attached, was a fat cylindrical body, the size and shape of an oversized tube of caulk. Unlike any other gun I’d ever seen, this one appeared to be made of sheet metal—a cylinder of stamped and rolled sheet metal—rather than a solid block of machined steel. Decker handed me the gun, and I raised it to my shoulder. It was surprisingly light, owing, I surmised, to its sheet-metal construction. “This is amazing,” I said. “I’ve heard of these, but never seen one. It’s called a grease gun because of the shape?”
He nodded. “Exactly. Looks like the gizmo your auto mechanic uses to squirt lube into your wheel bearings. Although this one squirts .45-caliber pistol bullets.”
The gun was fascinating; also puzzling. “And . . . you actually use this? No offense, but it looks obsolete.”
He chuckled. “It is obsolete, but I love it. We’ve got six, and yeah, we use ’em.” He took it from me, slid a finger into the chamber, and pulled it back. I heard a click that I recognized as the sound of a trigger cocking. “You see how simple this is? A lot simpler than any of our other automatic weapons. We carry these if we’re wearing hazmat suits and respirators and gloves—if we’re going into a meth lab, for instance. The barrel’s short, so the accuracy’s not terrific. But for close quarters? It’s a great get-off-me gun.”
The loading up continued all around us—more and more weaponry packed into formidable vehicles by police who looked like commandos—and I couldn’t hold back the question. “I gotta ask, Deck. Y’all really need all this firepower here in scruffy little Knoxville?”