They went around the warehouse, between two others, and then shot past an open hangar where Tinker was at work on something. Bugsy re-formed. “Tinker, there’s a damsel in distress. What’s that?” He pointed at the contraption Tinker had built. It had the treads of a tank, but with a body that looked cobbled together from oil drums and scrap metal, creating the base for a swiveling artillery gun that appeared to be manned by a Homer Simpson bobble head.

Tinker grinned, looking at it proudly. “I’m calling it a Think Tank. A tank with a programmed artificial intelligence. It’s all right here in the noggin.” He set the bobble head bobbling with a brush of his fingers. “Really simple intelligence, though. We can send it into the beasty swarm without worrying it’ll go mad and start—”

“Bring it! They’re getting into a plane, supersonic bomber it looks like.”

“Fuck,” Marcus said, knowing they were doing more than just making an escape. “Vasel thinks we should destroy Talas. He might try to bomb it on his way out of here.”

“That would be a very bad idea.” Bugsy swarmed again and was off, Marcus squirming so fast he almost got ahead of him. Tinker shouted some protest, but when Marcus glanced back he saw the big man lumbering along. The tank kept pace with him like a well-trained dog.

The airstrip was massive. A maze of crisscrossing runways and airplane hangars and several towers that stretched to the horizon. One plane was landing. Several others were taxiing. A bunch more—in various shapes and designs—cluttered the area as far as Marcus could see. “Which one is it?”

“There,” Bugsy said, suddenly his naked self again. He pointed at a sleek number just turning onto one of the runways. It was smaller than Marcus expected, more like a billionaire’s private jet than what he imagined a bomber to be—if the billionaire happened to like packing nuclear warheads attached to its underbelly. It was heading away from them, toward the end of the runway.

“What now?” Tinker asked.

Marcus pointed toward the plane, which was making a slow turn at the far end of the runway. “We stop that plane. Can this thing do it?”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Bugsy grumbled.

Tinker was more confident. “You bet. Homer, acquire target. Take out that Russian plane.”

The tank started toward the runway over a rough patch of grass. The bobble head bobbled, spun, and dipped. The gun lowered.

“No!” Marcus shouted. “Don’t shoot it! Olena’s in there.”

The gun boomed, sending a mortar round scorching across the tarmac and right into the tail section of … an entirely different plane, one parked innocently outside a hangar.

“I should’ve known,” Bugsy said. “Another Tinker original.”

“No, not that plane!” Tinker shouted. “The other one!”

The barrel of the gun swung around, shot again, this time taking out a helicopter.