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machine go out and explore 22,400 square miles of Lake Michigan.
    But now, they had a location.
    The old man cleared his throat, dug his left pointer finger into the folds of flesh below his left eye, rubbed there. “When I last spoke with you, you said you had researched a local vessel that could take your machine far out on the water?”
    Steve nodded. “JBS Salvage.”
    “A small operation, as I asked? Not a big fleet of ships?”
    “Just two men,” Steve said. “Only one boat.”
    “Good. And you check on them frequently?”
    “Every week.” A lie; a lie fueled by a stab of fear that maybe JBS had finally landed a job, that they wouldn’t be available. It had been three weeks since he’d even bothered to see if their boat was still in port.
    Bo Pan cleared his throat again. This time, he spit phlegm onto the dirt. “Can you talk to them right now?”
    “Of course,” Steve said, that feeling of foolishness growing. Why hadn’t he checked every week? Bo Pan was right — Steve
had
been lazy. If they had tofind another company to carry the
Platypus
to the target area, how long would that take? Days? Weeks?
    Bo Pan’s eyes narrowed. “You seem unsure.”
    “It’s fine,” Steve said. “I got this.”
    “And your strange machine … it
is
ready? There is nothing you need to tell me?”
    Steve smiled: that was something he didn’t have to lie about.
    “My gear is ready to rock, playa.”
    Bo Pan nodded. “Good, good. They will be happy to hear that. If you hire the boat company today, how soon do you think we can leave?”
    Steve felt a small burning in his chest. “We?”
    Bo Pan looked away, embarrassed. “They want me to go with you.”
    Of course. There had to be something to diminish the moment. Steve would be stuck on a boat with this old man for days, maybe even weeks. Well, that was a small price to pay to finally put the
Platypus
to work.
    And, at the very least, it was better than rolling up forks and knives in napkins.
    “I’ll go see JBS right now,” Steve said. “Maybe we can leave in a day or two.”
    Bo Pan slid both of his hands into his sweatshirt’s front pocket. He pulled out a thick envelope and a cell phone.
    He handed the envelope over. “Tonight,” he said. “Make them leave
tonight
.”
    Steve took the envelope. It felt solid, heavy, a brick of money.
    Bo Pan then handed Steve the cell.
    “Call me when you know,” Bo Pan said. “Use this phone only. I am already prepared for the trip.”
    The old man turned and walked across the park grass, headed for his rust-spotted, ten-year-old Chevy pickup.
    Steve turned back to face the water. The girls were gone. The wind was already growing from a stiff breeze into shirt-pulling gusts. November was supposed to be the worst time to be out on Lake Michigan.
    Five years preparing for this day. No, more like
nine
considering that they’d recognized his intelligence early and sent him to Berkeley, readying him for a project that would require a brilliant, deeply embedded engineer. Embedded? That wasn’t even the right word. Steve had been born right here,in Benton Harbor. He was as American as those girls, and yet he longed to serve a country he had never seen.
    A lifetime of waiting for a chance to serve his people, his heritage, and now — perhaps — his moment had finally come.
    He just hoped no one would get hurt.

DUTY
    Sitting on the couch in her living room, Margaret felt newly aware of how much she had fallen apart.
    Clarence sat on her left, as he if were really still by her side. That made him a liar. She wanted to hate him. He’d tightened the tie, dabbed the forehead, and once again looked like he’d just stepped out of the pages of
Government Agent Quarterly
.
    In a chair across from them sat Murray Longworth, director of the Department of Special Threats. Or, as people in the know tended to call it,
the second-most-powerful agency you’ve never heard of
.
    A black cane lay across Murray’s lap, the handle