A Time for Dead

His pants were too tight, Spencer Chowheim thought as he attempted to get comfortable in his sniper perch. Should've bought a 33 waist. Harder to find, sure, and seldom available on the discount rack. But at moments like this, the moment of truth, the difference made a difference. Chowheim squirmed inside his slightly-too-tight trousers.

"Maybe I'm getting fat?" he thought to himself and others. Hmm. An intriguing notion. Chowheim quickly calculated his up-to-the-minute Body Mass Index, based on his internal sense of blood pressure and the level of resistance he felt from the roof's granulated concrete surface. 28.4, same as always. It had to be the pants. A shame too, since historically, 34% of failed missions turned on ill-fitting couture. He sucked it in, vowing to himself to be the exception.

He would admit to friends, if he'd had any, that this was an unusual mission. He thought he'd seen it all during his eight year tenure as a highly in-demand rogue double agent, and one so skilled he'd been able to skip the normal single agent phase entirely, shooting straight into the big time of espionage. But he'd never been asked to shoot a deer before. At first he thought it must be a typo, written with a finger in the dust on his car's passenger side window, the way he always received his top secret missions. He'd figured Deer must be the last name of some deadly ex-KGB killing machine proficient in seventeen languages and Russo-karate. But over his customary eighteen months of research and preparation, Chowheim realized how wrong he had been. This was no ordinary deer.

This deer had vital information about nukes in the former Eskimo stronghold of Newfoundland, Canada. A mole deer, a triple agent. A triple agent was the most impressive and complicated thing a spy could be, man or beast, since anyone who attempted to make the leap to quadruple agent invariably got confused and ended up just becoming the regular plain vanilla agent they were pretending to be during the course of their subterfuge times four.

When Chowheim thought about it, he realized how perfect the plan had been. Nobody ever expects a deer. National reaction to the Disney film Bambi had been overwhelmingly positive ever since it opened on 1,517 screens in 1942. Entire generations of Americans were ripe for this con. And with a deer's average lifespan of 17.4 years in the Northern hemisphere, there was plenty of time for ample training and invaluable field experience before the serious missions began. Plus, he'd heard deer could run pretty fast. Always a handy trick to have up one's triple-agenting sleeve when in a pinch.

Chowheim calibrated his sights again to compensate for the warming early-morning air. It was an odd place to expect a deer, a busy Manhattan street on a Tuesday morning, but double agents thrive on expecting the unexpected, and triple agents thrive on hiding in plain sight. This deer was good.

Then he appeared. Casually, by a newspaper stand. Chowheim aimed for the pulmonary aortal junction, the surest kill spot for a male buck deer without rolling the dice on a dicey skull shot. Remembering his months spent in veterinary school and the additional weeks he spent wearing a deer suit in the wild, Chowheim aimed just below the junction, allowing gravity to do some of the bleeding work for him. It was no use taking his chances creating a geyser of deer blood squirting up into the air, which some passing Good Samaritan might catch in a bucket and use to save the rogue deer's life. Chowheim squeezed off a silent round without needing to look, and quickly broke down his rifle.

After changing his clothes, facial hair and blood type on his way down the stairwell, Chowheim made a point of weaving into the crowd gathering around the ex-triple agent deer's now-lifeless body. Market research had shown that the last person anyone suspects is the guy with the handlebar mustache walking towards the action.

Chowheim cast a quick glance streetward to admire his handiwork as he passed, then froze in his tracks like a glacier hitting a landmine. Something wasn't right. Something very wasn't right.

Just then Chowheim realized he'd shot a dog. Not even a particularly deer-like dog, either, it was a French poodle. Shit, Chowheim thought. Then he thought shit again. After a quick calculation of odds, counter-odds, and evens in his head, he realized it was time for Plan D. Quadruple-agency, here he came.


For more of this great story, buy Turner Volst's
A Time for Dead

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