Operation Slush Fund

The target was moving fast, and the snow was turning into a grey, sucking soup that wanted to steal Sam’s boots.

Sam hit the ground hard, his knees skidding into a patch of brown slush that instantly soaked through the denim of his jeans. He didn’t make a sound. A spy couldn’t afford to make sounds, not when the Target was only forty yards ahead and moving with the suspicious, jerky speed of a man who had something to hide. The mud was cold, but the air was weirdly, aggressively warm, a humid breath that didn’t belong in January. It made the park feel sick, like it was sweating out a fever.

“You’re gonna get trench foot,” Leo whispered from behind the cedar bush. He was crouching in a way that looked painful, his neon green toque pulled down so low it pushed his ears out like handles.

“Shut up,” Sam hissed. He crawled forward, ignoring the wet sensation spreading across his shins. “And stop breathing so loud. You sound like a pug.”

“I have a deviated septum. My mom says it’s structural.”

“The Target doesn’t care about your nose structure. He’s gaining ground.”

Sam pushed himself up, wiping his muddy hands on his coat. It was a good coat, a puffy black thing his Kohkum had bought him last month, but now it was too hot. The sun was a white glare in the sky, drilling down into the melting snow until the whole world looked like it was overexposed. Sweat prickled at Sam’s hairline. He hated this weather. It was wrong. Winter was supposed to be hard and sharp, not this soggy mess that smelled like thawing dog poop and diesel.

The Target—a tall man in a beige trench coat that looked ridiculous, like he was trying to cosplay a detective from a black-and-white movie—stepped over a puddle the size of a kiddie pool. He was clutching a briefcase. An actual, hard-shell briefcase.

“Who even uses a briefcase anymore?” Leo asked, scurrying up beside Sam. His boots made a wet *shluck-shluck* sound with every step.

“Someone running codes,” Sam said. “Or carrying a biological weapon. Look at how he’s holding it. Knuckles white. No swinging.”

“Maybe it’s a sandwich. A really heavy sandwich.”

“Focus, Leo. We have to flank him before he reaches the Bridge of Doom.”

The Bridge of Doom was a wooden footbridge over the creek, which was currently a raging torrent of brown runoff water and floating Tim Hortons cups. If the Target crossed the bridge, he’d be in the Upper Park, and they’d lose him in the crowd of dog walkers and people pretending to jog.

Sam took point. He darted from the cover of the cedar bush to the concrete base of a water fountain that had been wrapped in black plastic for the winter. The plastic was hot to the touch. He pressed his back against it, feeling the vibration of a city bus rumbling on the street beyond the park fence.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Probably his mom asking where he was, or if he’d finished the math sheet. He ignored it. The mission was fragile. The signal-to-noise ratio in the park was too high; too many civilians, too many distractions.

“Movement,” Leo signaled, using a hand gesture that meant absolutely nothing but looked cool.

The Target had stopped. He was checking his watch. Then he looked behind him.

Sam dropped flat. The concrete was gritty and wet. He stared at a cigarette butt pressed into the slush inches from his nose. It was stained with pink lipstick. The world was so gross when you looked at it from the floor. He held his breath, listening to the thud of his own heart in his ears. It was a frantic, erratic beat, like a drummer who didn’t know the song.

“Did he see us?” Leo whispered. He was hiding behind a garbage can that was overflowing with pizza boxes.

“Negative. He’s looking for his contact.”

“I want a pizza,” Leo said, staring at the garbage.

“We are in the field, Leo. No rations until the objective is secured.”

Sam peeked around the fountain. The Target was moving again, walking faster now, heading straight for the treacherous expanse of the Great Lawn. In the summer, this was soccer fields. Right now, it was a minefield of grey snowdrifts, hidden puddles, and patches of grass that had turned into slick, fibrous slime.

“We have to cross the open ground,” Sam said, feeling the weight of the decision. It was tactical suicide, but they had no choice.

“My boots aren’t waterproof,” Leo complained. “I can feel the dampness. It’s seeping. It’s a seepage situation.”

“Run fast, don’t sink.”

Sam broke cover. He sprinted. The ground was deceptive. The top layer of snow was granular and sugary, but underneath it was pure water. Every third step, his foot punched through the crust and splashed down into freezing liquid. It was a physical shock that traveled straight up his spine, but he kept his face rigid. A grimace of pure focus.

The heat of the day was oppressive. Inside his coat, his t-shirt was sticking to his back. The air tasted metallic. He dodged a rotted stump and vaulted over a yellow 'CAUTION: ICE' sandwich board that had fallen face down in the mud.

Leo was lagging. He was running with his arms flailing, his heavy backpack bouncing against his spine. He looked like a turtle trying to escape a soup pot. He slipped, caught himself on a park bench, and kept going.

“Contact front!” Sam yelled, skidding to a halt behind a large oak tree.

A woman with three golden retrievers on a tangled leash system was blocking the path. The dogs were losing their minds, lunging at a squirrel that had made a poor tactical decision to run up a hydro pole. The leashes created a web of nylon tripwires across the trail.

“Obstacle,” Sam muttered. “We can’t go through. We’ll get tangled. We’ll be neutralized by slobber.”

“The Target is getting away!” Leo pointed. The man in the trench coat was fifty yards out, nearing the tree line.

“We have to go off-road.”

“ Into the brambles? Sam, no. My coat will snag. It’s polyester. It rips if you look at it wrong.”

“Do you want to save the city or not?”

“I mostly just want to know what’s in the box.”

Sam didn’t wait for consensus. He dove into the brush to the left of the path. The bushes were dormant, dry jagged sticks that whipped at his face. He shielded his eyes with his forearm, pushing through the resistance. The ground here was uneven, hiding rocks and roots under the slush. He stumbled, his ankle rolling painfully, but the adrenaline cushioned the hurt.

The noise of the park—the distant traffic, the barking dogs, the shouting kids—faded into a dull roar as the branches closed around him. It felt like entering a different frequency. Just him, the scratching of twigs on nylon, and the heavy, humid silence of the thicket.

He emerged on the other side, panting. A scratch on his cheek burned. He touched it, checking for blood. Clean. Just a welt. Battle damage.

Leo crashed through a second later, looking wild-eyed. A dead leaf was stuck to his toque.

“I think I swallowed a bug,” Leo gasped. “In January. That’s not right. That’s against nature.”

“Target?”

“12 o’clock. By the gazebo.”

The gazebo was a rotting Victorian structure that smelled of urine and spray paint. It sat on a small hill, commanding the high ground. The Target was standing there, setting the briefcase down on the railing.

Sam narrowed his eyes. The sun glare was intense, bouncing off the metal roof of the gazebo. He squinted, trying to zoom in like a camera lens, but his human eyes were flawed. They watered. He wiped them with a gloved hand.

“He’s opening it,” Sam whispered.

They crept closer, using the slope of the hill for cover. The grass here was dead and yellow, flattened by the weight of the winter’s previous snow. It was slippery. Sam dug the toes of his boots in, crawling army-style. The wetness on his stomach was total now. His hoodie, his shirt, his skin. He was a creature of the swamp.

“If it’s money,” Leo whispered, “we take a finder’s fee. Ten percent. That’s the law.”

“It’s not money. It’s plutonium. Or a severed hand.”

“Why would he carry a severed hand in a park?”

“To feed the ducks. I don’t know, Leo. Just watch.”

They were twenty feet away now, huddled behind a concrete planter filled with cigarette butts and frozen dirt. The Target clicked the latches of the briefcase. *Snap. Snap.* The sound was crisp in the humid air.

He lifted the lid.

Sam held his breath. The world narrowed down to that rectangle of darkness inside the case. The wind shifted, blowing the smell of the man’s cologne toward them—something musky and expensive, like a department store floor.

The man reached in and pulled out... a sandwich.

It was wrapped in wax paper. He unwrapped it slowly. It was ham. Just ham.

Leo let out a long, deflated sigh that sounded like a tire puncture. “I told you. It’s a sandwich.”

“Wait,” Sam said. “Look closer.”

The man took a bite. He chewed, looking out over the muddy expanse of the park. He looked bored. He looked like a man who hated his job and his life and just wanted to eat ham in peace.

“It’s a decoy,” Sam insisted, though his conviction was wobbling. “The real payload is still in the case. Under the false bottom.”

“He’s eating the payload, Sam. It’s lunch. We tracked a guy for six blocks to watch him eat lunch.”

“Maybe the ham is coded. Arranged in a specific pattern.”

“It’s processed meat. It’s not data.”

Sam felt the frustration boiling up, mixing with the heat of the day. He couldn’t let it end like this. The narrative was collapsing. The boredom of reality was encroaching, threatening to turn the spy mission back into just two wet kids in a dirty park on a Tuesday.

Suddenly, a crow landed on the gazebo railing. It was huge, sleek, and black, with an eye that looked like a drop of oil. It cawed, a harsh, grating sound.

The man flinched. He dropped a piece of the sandwich.

“Asset down,” Sam whispered.

The crow hopped closer. The man waved a hand at it. “Shoo. Get lost.”

“He’s communicating with the avian drone,” Sam said, desperate to salvage the plot. “The crow is the handler.”

“The crow is hungry,” Leo said, standing up. His knees cracked. “I’m hungry. I’m going to go ask him for a piece.”

“Abort! Leo, do not engage!”

But Leo was already walking up the hill, his arms swinging loosely. He looked harmless, just a kid in a neon hat, but Sam knew the danger. Civilian interaction was unpredictable.

Sam stayed low, watching. He felt the cold mud seeping into his elbows. He felt foolish. But he also felt alert, his nervous system humming with the leftover adrenaline of the chase. He watched Leo approach the man.

The man looked down, startled. He pulled the briefcase closer, a defensive reflex.

“Hey,” Leo said. His voice carried clearly.

The man blinked. “Hey?”

“Is that ham?”

The man looked at his sandwich, then at Leo, then around the empty park. “Uh. Yeah. It’s ham and swiss.”

“Cool,” Leo said. He stood there for a second, swaying slightly. “You got any chips in the case?”

The man chuckled, a dry, rusty sound. “No chips. Just paperwork.”

“Boring,” Leo said.

“Tell me about it.”

Leo turned and walked back down the hill. The interaction was over. The tension dissipated like steam.

Sam waited until Leo slid back behind the planter. “Report.”

“He confirmed it. Paperwork. And ham. No chips.”

Sam sat up, brushing the dirt off his chest. The disappointment was a physical weight, heavy in his gut. But then he looked at the briefcase again. The man had closed it. He was looking at his watch again. He looked nervous.

“He lied,” Sam said softly. “He said paperwork. But he didn’t show you.”

Leo rolled his eyes. “Sam, give it up.”

“He was defensive. Did you see how he pulled the case in? He was protecting the asset.”

Sam stood up. The heat was making him dizzy. The park seemed to stretch out forever, a landscape of brown and grey, endless and boring. He needed the game. He needed the stakes.

“New objective,” Sam said. “We don’t need the case. We need to secure the extraction point before he does.”

“What extraction point?”

“The slide. The big spiral one. If he gets to the slide, he can transmit the signal.”

“Why would he transmit from a slide?”

“Elevation. Physics. Don’t argue with science, Leo.”

Leo sighed, but he was smiling a little. “Fine. But if I pass out from hunger, you have to carry me.”

“Move out.”

They took off running again, skirting the edge of the hill. The mud sucked at their boots. The sun beat down on their necks. The world was wet and gross and warm, but for a moment, it was also dangerous. It was full of spies and codes and ticking clocks.

Sam felt a stitch in his side, a sharp pain under his ribs. He pushed through it. He imagined he was running from an explosion, a fireball rolling up the hill behind them. He didn’t look back. He just ran, his breath huffing in rhythm with his feet hitting the slush.

They reached the playground. It was a chaotic structure of red metal and yellow plastic, rising out of a sea of woodchips that were currently floating in a shallow lake of meltwater. The spiral slide—the Tower—loomed high above.

“The moat is flooded,” Leo observed, stopping at the edge of the woodchip lake.

“We have to jump it.”

“It’s too far. I have short legs.”

“Use the stepping stones.” Sam pointed to a series of rubber mushroom-shaped platforms that poked out of the water.

They were slick with ice. A trap.

“I go first,” Sam said. “Cover me.”

He stepped onto the first mushroom. His boot slid, but he corrected his balance, waving his arms. He hopped to the second. The water below was murky, reflecting the grey sky. It looked deep. Probably filled with piranhas or submerged electric cables.

He made it to the third, then the fourth, and finally leaped onto the dry(ish) rubber mat at the base of the structure. He turned back.

“Go, Leo! The enemy is approaching!”

There was no enemy. Just a mom pushing a stroller far off on the path. But Leo nodded, his face serious.

Leo stepped onto the first mushroom. He wobbled. He looked like a statue about to topple. He took a breath and jumped to the second. He landed hard, his foot slipping off the edge.

Splash.

Leo’s left leg went in up to the calf. He froze.

“Man down!” Leo shouted, his voice cracking.

“Extract! Extract!” Sam yelled, reaching out a hand.

Leo scrambled, dragging his wet leg out of the water and throwing himself toward the platform. Sam grabbed his wrist and pulled. They collapsed together on the rubber mat, a tangle of limbs and wet jackets.

Leo sat up, inspecting his leg. His jeans were black with water. “It’s cold. It’s so cold. I can feel the toxins entering my bloodstream.”

“You’ll survive, soldier. We have to reach the summit.”

They scrambled up the ladders. The metal bars were cold and smelled like pennies. Sam’s gloves were soaked, making his grip slippery. He hauled himself up to the first platform, then the second. The view from the top was panoramic. The whole park lay spread out below them: the brown fields, the grey trees, the winding paths of slush.

Sam scanned the horizon. The Target was still at the gazebo, eating his sandwich. He hadn’t moved.

“He’s not coming,” Leo said, leaning against the plastic wall of the slide. “He’s just eating.”

Sam watched the man. He felt a strange pang of sadness. The man looked so small from up here. Just a grey speck in a grey world.

“He’s waiting for nightfall,” Sam lied. “He’s a sleeper agent. Literally. He’s going to take a nap.”

Leo kicked his wet heel against the plastic. *Thump. Thump.* “My foot is squishy. I can hear the water between my toes. It’s gross.”

“We held the high ground,” Sam said. “Mission accomplished.”

“Can we go home now? I have Pizza Pockets in the freezer.”

Sam looked at the slide. The plastic was dry inside, a dark yellow tunnel spiraling down into the darkness. It was an escape chute.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “We can go.”

“You first.”

Sam positioned himself at the mouth of the slide. The static electricity made his hair stand up. He could feel the buzz against his scalp.

“See you on the other side,” Sam said.

He pushed off.

The world dissolved into a yellow blur. Gravity took over. He spun around the curves, faster and faster, the friction warming his legs through his jeans. For a few seconds, there was no slush, no waiting, no boring adults, no wet socks. Just speed and the rush of air.

He shot out the bottom and landed in the woodchips with a thud. He lay there for a second, staring up at the grey sky. A cloud moved, revealing a patch of pale, watery blue. It was almost pretty.

Leo came shooting out a moment later, landing in a heap beside him. “Ow. My butt.”

They lay there, side by side, breathing hard. The park noise came rushing back in—a siren wailing on the main road, a dog barking, the squelch of boots on mud.

“That was a good mission,” Leo said, staring at the sky.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Solid.”

“Next time, let’s track someone with a dog. Dogs are better than briefcases.”

“Agreed.”

Sam sat up. His back was wet. His boots were heavy. He was starving. But he felt good. He felt sharp.

“Pizza Pockets?” Sam asked.

“Pizza Pockets,” Leo confirmed.

They stood up, brushing the woodchips off their clothes. They began the long, slow trudge back toward the street, leaving the flooded playground behind them. The Target was still eating his sandwich in the distance, unaware that he had just survived a high-stakes encounter with the city’s top counter-intelligence unit.

Sam put his hands in his pockets. His phone buzzed again. He pulled it out. A text from his mom: *Bring milk on your way home.*

He stared at the screen. The glow of the pixels looked bright against the grey day. A new mission directive.

“We have to detour,” Sam said, his voice serious.

“What is it? Enemy reinforcements?”

“Supply run. The General needs calcium.”

Leo groaned. “That’s on the other side of the avenue. That’s enemy territory.”

“We can handle it.”

“I better get an extra Pizza Pocket for this.”

“Two. If we survive.”

They stepped onto the paved path, their boots syncing up, marching into the slushy sunset. The city loomed ahead of them, tall and grey and full of noise, waiting to be conquered.