“He’s not driving to the infiltration point,” said Emily. “Period.”

Rich shrugged. “It was fun while it lasted. Looked like you were going for a swim?”

“I was thinking about it. I’m like fifteen minutes from a reactor core meltdown.”

Jared hopped on board, taking shelter under the canopy. “I wouldn’t know, since we had a twenty-mile-per-hour wind and lake spray hitting our faces for the past hour.”

“These things move faster than I thought,” said Devin. “I saw people skiing and tubing behind them.”

“Yeah. I had originally envisioned three speedboats, mostly because I don’t know a damn thing about lake recreation,” said Rich. “But these are actually better overall. More room for gear, and they can navigate shallower water. We still need a speedboat to launch the drone. Gupta isn’t confident twenty miles per hour is fast enough. I think it is, but he’s not convinced—and the drone surveillance is critical.”

“I suppose we could steal one from a marina,” said Devin. “How hard could it be to hot-wire one of those things?”

“The thought had crossed my mind. Alex called a few minutes ago and said the deal is almost done. The owner of a Sea Ray is on his way over to a place where they can put the boat in the water to run it. Somewhere not too far south of Diamond City, which isn’t too far from here.”

“What about Graves and Gupta? It sounds like they’ll have to work from one of the boats,” said Devin. “We’ll have to move one of the pontoon boats to a cove closer to the conservation area. I don’t think they’ll be able to control the drone from here.”

“Berg dropped Graves and Gupta with Alex’s team, then secured parking for their vehicle at a motel in Diamond City. No vacancies, but for the same price as a room, you can park in one of the dozen open spaces overnight. They’ll run the SUV over, load up the boat, and head our way. We have vehicles all over the lake at this point. Not ideal, but what else could we do?” said Rich. “As far as relocating goes, we won’t have to worry about that. They’ll use the speedboat. We’ll all head out together, and they’ll speed ahead to launch it.”

“Will they be able to operate the drone from a speedboat?” asked Devin.

“Tim says it’ll be fine, and he’s a boater. They’ll launch the drone, put it in one of those autonomous aerial patterns away from the camp, and find a quiet cove nearby to work their magic.”

“What will Karl do while all of this is going on?” asked Devin.