12
Lola was wiped out as she came down upon the agreed coordinates. The dark still lay upon the desert. They’d chosen a lonely spot, flat and free of any sand dunes. She’d thumped the helicopter down harder than she’d expected. Lola could taste why in the night air—salt. This wasn’t the land of soft sand; they were on a hard salt pan. That and she’d been sloppy with fatigue.
As the turbines wound down, she could feel the last tiny bits of energy draining out of her until they both ground to a halt in unison and she couldn’t move. She’d been so full of energy a mere eight hours, two midair refuelings, and two thousand kilometers ago.
She’d gotten them down, not clean, but she got them down. Lola tried flexing her fingers from where they’d been curled around the controls, and pain rockete
