Hoover Dam and Lake Mead were in view off to the north as Jennlynn flew Songbird toward the Redlite Ranch. Thank God for that place, she thought. There were times that she really needed to get her mind off of the office and the problems, and today had been worse than most.

The systems test of the Butterfly out at China Lake, the Navy’s testing ground in Southeastern California, had been a bust. Again. Not just a minor bust, either; this had been one of the more spectacular failures yet.

Lambdatron was not used to failure. The things they designed usually worked the first try off the breadboard. It was rare that something didn’t need tweaking after studying real-world results, but such tweaks were usually pretty minor.

At this point, though, about the best tweak that Jennlynn could think of for that miserable bastard of a Butterfly would be to just shitcan the project, write off the seventeen million bucks that had been spent on it, and give the scattered pieces of wreckage up as a bad idea.

So far, scattered bits of wreckage was about all that the project had produced. Back in January, when they’d hauled the first core out to China Lake, they figured that putting it in a bunker was just a good safety precaution considering all the power that was being fed into it. It proved to be a very wise precaution; the bunker came out worse for wear, but at least no one was hurt. The only core that had showed signs of working was the Mark 4; that one got to twenty percent output before self-destructing as badly as the others. At least the bunker was stronger and had survived. That led the Lambdatron engineers to think that maybe they had a lead on the problem, but the Mark 5, the Mark 6, and yesterday’s Mark 7 pretty well proved that they had been farting into a hurricane.

That led to the meeting this morning, and to Jennlynn running late. Meetings at Lambdatron tended to be pretty upbeat, mostly because Stan liked people to think positive, but there just wasn’t much positive to say about the Mark 7 test. In fact, it came right down to heads rolling; the two highly paid consultants blamed everyone but themselves for the disaster, especially the shop people. They’d done that once too often, since they’d pretty well proved that they were talking through their hats. Passing the buck was not appreciated at Lambdatron, nor was covering your ass, and they had done both, big time. They were out on the street before the meeting was over with, and there wasn’t much that anyone could think of to do to save the project. They might be able to scape up enough of the remaining funding to build a Mark 8, but nobody had any idea of anything they could do to make it any more successful than the previous seven versions.

Jennlynn had felt that they were barking up the wrong tree as early as the Mark 1 failure. The project was highly classified, so she couldn’t talk in specifics, but Mike knew what security was all about and they could talk around the edges of the issue. She suggested that he come on board on the project, to give a different opinion, but he begged off, since the people who had been brought in knew more about it than he did. But, speaking in euphemisms, Jennlynn pretty well figured that he’d been correct from the beginning: too much power in too small of a space.

So now, they were between a rock and a hard spot. About the only thing that they could think of to do was for Stan and Griz and her to get on an airliner next Wednesday, go to the Pentagon, and meet with the government project officers to get a feeling about whether to push on or call it the lost cause that it was. In any case, they were going to need more funding if they were going to carry it off, and in any case they weren’t going to be able to manage it by their deadline.

About the only thing that had gone right that morning was that she’d managed to get a few minutes with Jon and Tanisha. This was their last day at Lambdatron before heading back to Georgia Tech for their senior year, and neither of them wanted to go very badly. They faced another year as bleak and paranoid as they’d endured the winter before – and nobody wanted them to go, for that reason. Also for the fact that while some things had gone well at Lambdatron over the summer, the project Jon and Tanisha had been working on had gone spectacularly well.

At the beginning of the summer, the hope of Jennlynn and other project managers had been that they could ship the prototype die cutter controller to Hadley-Monroe before the two headed back to Georgia Tech; Jon and Tanisha had blown that timeline to pieces. The first prototype controller had been shipped in late June, and by the middle of July, it had been drawing rave reviews, the best of which came from Jon’s father, who didn’t know his son had designed it. Just the other day, there had been a production contract signed. Lambdatron would actually farm the production out to an outfit in Taiwan, but they’d still see several hundred bucks on each unit. Considering the fact that not only would they go on a couple thousand new machines a year; the new controller could be retrofitted to every machine that had been built for the last twenty-five years – all the way back to the beginning. The new version was so versatile that the controller could easily be adapted to some other machines the company made. From a chance remark from Jon, it had turned into a windfall that made up for a lot of the sting inflicted by the badly misnamed Butterfly.

But the whole purpose of going to the Redlite in the first place was to get her mind off of it. Just leave it behind, don’t think about it, deal with it next week. For the next two days, she could be someone else – someone charming, cute, witty, inane, be a tease – someone about as far as possible from the driven and depressed project engineer that she’d been for the last few months.

She needed a break. Badly. It would have been nice, hell, perfect, to get together with Will and just go for several days’ ride out on the ranch – checking fences, maybe with a stop for a couple days up at that lovely little canyon below the Jennings Range that they’d shared. But Will was off in Saudi Arabia, which at least was a desert he could like, rather than a people-crammed place like Dover, which had been really depressing for him. They’d managed a long weekend together when he’d come home from Dover before heading off to Saudi, but he had to spend time with his folks, and besides, she could only take so much time away from the Butterfly.

Just a different problem to think about would have been welcome. Like, say, the 310. It had been tough to get it set up to use this weekend; Joe had it off in Denver, and he’d barely made it back in time to allow her to gas it up and leave for Antelope Valley. At least it wasn’t scheduled again until Tuesday; the thought crossed her mind that she might take another day at the Redlite, just for the sake of hiding from the reality of Lambdatron a little more, even though Sunday afternoons and evenings were often pretty slow. But it would be a day that she didn’t have to deal with the Butterfly.

Once again the thought crossed her mind that Songbird was getting scheduled a little too tightly. It was fine running to Los Angeles and Denver, but they’d had to make several trips to Chicago over the past year to deal with Hadley-Monroe issues, and several times to Washington, as well. It still was faster to take the airlines that far, especially as tightly as the 310 was being scheduled. A year ago, both she and Mike had sat down and run a cost-effectiveness study on adding another airplane, something faster that would put Chicago on par with airlines, and Washington in a pinch. They’d been talking airplanes like the Cessna 400 series, maybe, if they could find one at the right price, something like a Beech King Air, a turboprop job that moved right out. But the use just hadn’t been there to justify the awesome cost of the airplane, so it was still a paper study.

Maybe she ought to get something like the Mooney, she thought for the umpteenth time. It would do for Lambdatron in a pinch and keep her from having to fly the expensive, six-seat Cessna to Antelope Valley every other weekend, and have it sit there unused when all too often there was work it could be doing elsewhere. And hell, it wasn’t as if she couldn’t afford it.

Actually, she grinned, perhaps what she ought to do was buy a Pitts S-2, which was a very powerful two-seat biplane used for aerobatics. Mike knew a guy who had a couple to rent, and several times he’d taken her out and shown her how to do some of the moves. It had been leading up to a point and she knew it – once she got some of the moves down, Mike had gotten into the other Pitts, and they’d gone out and played World War I fighter pilot, except with a plane stronger, more powerful, and more agile than any Great War fighter pilot could have dreamed. Not surprisingly, the long-time fighter pilot kicked her butt repeatedly.

She got a grin on her face. It sure would be a kick to fly into the Redlite in a hot little biplane like that. People goggled their eyes enough to see a hooker fly into the place in the 310 – what the hell would it be like with a Pitts?

Eight years in the business now, as of last spring, and she had a reputation, mostly built on the flying. Some of the Air Force guys who occasionally showed up from Nellis, Indian Springs, or Tonopah even called her "Skyhooker," which had of course, been the point of the name of Skyhook Aviation, anyway. It was a well enough known moniker that it approached being a work name, and caused her no little amount of amusement.

The simple fact was, in who knew how many trips over the last eight years, she’d never driven her car into the Redlite or the other two places she’d worked. Not once. It was a point of pride with her; no other hooker in the state could make that claim. Or the country, probably, although with illegals and indies there was no way of telling for sure. But not many of the people who called her "Skyhooker" on the weekends realized what she did on her day job.

The bottom line was that she needed something new, she realized after a while. A new challenge; one that would be interesting, not frustrating like the damn Butterfly. Best of all it would be something outside the company entirely. After all, she wasn’t a kid anymore; she did need more relaxation, more recreation, than just flying up to the Redlite and playing courtesan.

Maybe a Pitts wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. It would be something to think about. Maybe the first chance she got, she’d take a look at Trade-A-Plane.

* * *

Jennlynn had never particularly liked partying with drunks and didn’t drink much herself. While she enjoyed the partying, since she didn’t really need the money, she was a little quicker than most girls to walk a guy who had a load on. The guy who picked her out of the lineup late on Saturday evening – actually early Sunday morning – when things were really starting to rock, was shorter than she was, going to fat a little, a little dark although light-skinned for a Latino. He had a little more of a load on than she really wanted to deal with, and she could see that he pretty well figured that he was God’s gift to women. Also, she didn’t like his attitude; time for a walk, she thought, even before they went back to her room and started negotiations. "How much for a one-hour, two-pop half and half?" the guy asked, knowing the slang of the trade for a one hour oral and vaginal session in which he would be brought off twice.

"Two thousand," she replied without hesitation.

"That’s a little high, isn’t it?" he sneered.

"You think I can’t walk right back out there and get someone else?" she sneered back. "This is Saturday night."

"Oh, hell," he said. "I just made a big score. Might as well celebrate."

Caught, she thought. Damn it. I should have asked three, but most of the girls in this place would have done him for six hundred. Maybe he won’t be that bad. And my share is twelve hundred bucks, after all. "All right," she sighed. "Cash or credit card?"

"Cash," he said, reaching for his wallet, and pulling out a fat wad of Franklins. That was unusual; most guys didn’t carry that kind of cash into a brothel, and he didn’t make a very big dent in the roll. Most business was done by credit card; the charges came through on the statement as "RLR Casino Management," which was intended to make it look like they’d dropped the money on blackjack or something. There really was a company by that name; it was one of George’s smokescreen companies to cover up his real money from his ex-wife.

"OK, let’s run the dick check before I go settle with the office," she said. It was one of the first things that Eileen had taught her back up at the Mustang and required by state law before any party – even though they used condoms, the man had to be inspected for external signs of STDs. It was also grounds for a walk, and maybe she could find something questionable. The guy dropped his pants, and she took a metal pan with a little soapy water, put it under his penis, washed it off, and looked it over. Nope, no luck, she thought. Not all that large either, although he probably thinks it’s as big as all outdoors. "All right," she said. "I’ll be back in a couple minutes. There’s a porn magazine over on the table if you want a little inspiration."

Still wearing the tight, short, and low-cut red dress she’d worn in the lineup, she headed up to the office, where LouAnn was behind the counter. A long time ago it had gotten too busy for Shirley to handle all the management, especially when they were open 24/7, so they’d brought in another couple floor managers, and she usually just worked days. "Two big ones, LouAnn," she told the floor manager, handing her the cash – once it was out of the room it was pretty hard for a guy to get rough about getting it back if he thought he’d been shorted. "An hour, and set the timer. Don’t let me go over, although I doubt like hell it’s going to be a problem."

"Loser, huh?" LouAnn said. She’d been in the business a lot of years herself, although nothing like Shirley, and was now content to just oversee things.

"Big time. I tried to walk him but he met the price."

"Shit happens," LouAnn shrugged as Jennlynn headed back to her room.

She walked in the door pulling what there was of the dress over her head. "Tell you what," she said. "Let’s do a quick shower and then it’ll be more pleasant for the both of us. You can even shower with me and I won’t run the clock on it." Like hell, she thought, but he doesn’t need to know that.

All in all, the first pop wasn’t as bad as she’d expected, although she’d had any number better. Afterward, the guy went limp, and she lay next to him, just talking while fondling him to get him back up for his second round. Some guys liked to brag to hookers, it helped get them hard, so this was an obvious time to start a conversation. "So, how’d you make this score?" she asked, figuring it must have been drugs; he had that kind of sleaze around him, and she’d sized up enough men over the years to be able to read them pretty well.

"Set up a deal to buy an airplane at a real steal. Had to pay off a guy in the DEA in Houston to schedule it for bid and forget to advertise it."

Yeah, a sleaze all right, she thought. "What kind of plane?" she asked, out of curiosity.

"A Learjet," he told her. "The feds busted some guys hauling coke into the country in it and seized it. Gonna be good to get that bad boy back to work."

Hauling coke into the country again, she thought. Not a surprise. One of the guys who she’d been in the aviation program at Caltech with had been busted not long ago, she’d heard, and was doing fifteen to twenty. You just damn well tell me that being a legal hooker isn’t more moral. "Made a good deal, huh?" she said.

"Should be," he smiled. "He set the minimum bid at a hundred big ones, so I figure bidding a hundred two, just to be on the safe side."

"Sounds good enough to me," she said, her mind running hard. It had been a while since she’d spent a few spare minutes glancing through the jet section of Trade-A-Plane, but she knew that the minimum cost for any Learjet was in the range of half a million dollars. "I think you’re starting to get it up again," she said. "Let me roll on a rubber and we’ll see what we can do with the other half."

The moves were pretty close to automatic, so she didn’t have to think about that part very hard. Sweet Mary Magdalene, a Learjet for a hundred grand! How much did he have to pay someone off to manage that? And the feds, at that? Good grief, she ought to call the FBI!

But a fucking Learjet!

Even if it was an old one – even if it was in rotten shape, which wouldn’t be a surprise for a drug hauler – a hundred and two was a hell of a deal in anyone’s book for any Learjet ever built that was airworthy enough to stagger into the air. Hell, a person could dump a couple hundred grand into a rebuild and still come out way ahead! No wonder the guy was throwing his money around!

Does this idiot know he’s talking to Skyhooker, of all the damn people? Hell, the 310 is sitting right outside! Of course, he probably thinks some guy flew it in here to party . . . I don’t have to work Monday, there’s no way I’m not going to check that out. Not only would it be a deal, it would be a public service . . .

The guy was showing signs of getting close, so she got up, got on him cowboy fashion and finished him off. He bucked pretty good, and got what he paid for. "Hey, guy," she said as she got up. "That was pretty cool. I hope it was as good for you as it was for me."

* * *

It’s probably a fool’s errand, she thought as she fired up Songbird the next morning and took off heading for Houston. Hell, if the fix is in, the fix is probably too tight. But it’s a day off, and I might just learn something about business jets.

Up to this point, she really hadn’t considered a bizjet for the upgrade from the 310, or an addition, or something. They were expensive, and expensive to operate. There were places where they could be operated profitably, but up to this point, Lambdatron’s business hadn’t been one of them. But it showed signs of going in that direction eventually. There’d been times in the past year, granted, not many, where a Learjet or something like it would have been just the ticket – the runs to Washington, even the runs to Chicago. Even running to Denver in Songbird just barely beat airline times, it was more the convenience and the chance of setting their own schedule at a comparable cost that made the light twin a reasonable deal for that run.

But a business jet was three times faster . . . that opened up a whole new world of possibilities, supposing that this is a reasonable deal for a hundred grand. Say a hundred and a quarter, assuming that there’d have to be some fixing up done. That was still a quarter of the capital cost of buying a cheap bird out of Trade-A-Plane. The direct operating costs wouldn’t be any lower, but the amortization costs that had to be added to them . . . the numbers rolled over in her head, admittedly with considerable guesswork, but given a bird with most of its seats full, compared to first class on an airliner, it was do-able. In fact, since this deal probably would fall on its round little ass, this trip probably wasn’t necessary, but maybe I ought to sit down with Mike and do a cost analysis on another one, bought on the open market. There’s a chance that might work, too. Even getting me to thinking along these lines might be worth the trip . . .

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