The Sirena Quest by Michael A. Kahn

is?”
    â€œNot yet,” Gordie said.
    â€œBut we’re in the hunt,” Ray said.
    The school bell rang. From inside the classroom came the sounds of textbooks closing and students getting up.
    â€œÂ¿Vamos, Señor Bronco?” Ray asked.
    Billy hesitated.
    â€œCome on,” Gordie said. He nodded toward Lou and Ray. “These guys have already hijacked my day. Your turn.”
    Billy shrugged. “Okay.”
    Bronco , Lou repeated with a smile as Billy ducked back into the classroom to gather his stuff.
    Billy had started college as William McCormick. Not Bill or Will or Willie. William was the only name he’d been called since birth, and that remained the case until parents’ weekend during the fall of their freshman year. His mother and father flew in from Shaker Heights for the event. On Saturday night, they invited their son’s three roommates—all sans parents that weekend—to join them for supper at the Josiah Barrett Inn. During the meal, Mrs. McCormick passed around baby photographs of William while her only son frowned at his plate.
    Later that night—much, much later—on the lawn behind Barrett Inn, long after Mommy and Father had retired for the evening and shortly after downing his eighth beer, William confessed his dark secret. Even though Father expected him to join the State Department after graduation and then return to Cleveland to enter the family merchant banking business, what he really, really, really wanted to do, what he’d dreamed about since childhood, was to move to Montana to become a rodeo cowboy.
    He’d passed out just moments after that confession. As they would later discover, the closest he’d come to riding the range was on his ninth birthday, when his parents took him to the Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky and bought him two rides on the Kiddy Kingdom Carousel. Nevertheless, as young William McCormick lay in a stupor on the lawn behind Barrett Inn, Ray Gorman announced that henceforth William would be known as Bronco Billy—a nickname so incongruous it stuck.
    Billy emerged from the classroom with a sheepish grin, his sports jacket folded over one arm.
    Ray put an arm around his shoulders as they headed down the hall. “We’ll fill you in at lunch, Bronco.”
    To his occasionally exasperated roommates freshman year, Billy had been the quintessence of predictability. Majored in economics, minored in political science—just like Father. Ran on the cross country team—just like Father. Started studying to take the foreign service exam that was three years into the future—just like Father, who spent two years at Foggy Bottom before being assigned to the United States Embassy in Lima. After ten years, Father retired from the service and parlayed his overseas connections into a partnership at an investment banking firm in Cleveland. That was Bronco’s career path, too.
    Or so it seemed. After college and two years in D.C., he received his first overseas assignment: attaché to the political section of the United States Embassy in Managua, Nicaragua.
    But then Bronco Billy veered off his career path.
    Literally.
    And permanently.
    As the four of them were walking down the front stairs of the school, Billy stopped.
    Lou turned to look back at him. “What?”
    Billy was grinning. “It’s just great to see all you guys together.”
    As they piled into Lou’s van, Gordie shouted, “The James Gang is back!”
    They’d named themselves after their dormitory, James Hall. Ray had been the gruff platoon leader, Gordie the manic-depressive joker, and Bronco Billy the good-natured nerd.
    And just like freshman year, Lou thought, here they were dragging Bronco along. If asked, Bronco would always tag along—say, to the basement TV room on a Sunday afternoon to join the throng of freshmen watching the Celtics-Knicks game. But as the crowd grew more raucous, as more