Free Orphan's Alliance (Jason Wander) by Robert Buettner Page A

you told Munchkin you were messing with her only child, did she howl like a scalded cougar?”
    We stepped out of the Tank into the bustling corridor, as Howard studied his fingernails. “Actually, we left it for you to break the news to Congresswoman Metzger.”
FIFTEEN
    SIX HOURS AFTERI left Howard at the Pentagon, and one hundred thirty-three years after Charles Lindbergh landed at Paris Le Bourget, I landed there, too.
    Lindbergh’s flight from the U.S. took thirty-three hours, via propellor-driven aeroplane. My flight took one hour and thirty-three minutes, via VIP scavenging combustion ramjet, funded by Howard. Lindbergh came to Paris to become a hero. I came to the Paris Air Show to pet a scalded cougar who might bite my head off.
    Munchkin was working the Paris Air Show as a celebrity spokesperson because she was a decorated veteran of the Ganymede campaign, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, who served on the House Armed Services Committee, and most of her constituents worked for or supplied Lockheed. Lockheed had chosen the Paris Air Show to debut to the aerospace industry a vehicle rumored to make scramjets more obsolete than scramjets had made propellor aeroplanes. I say “rumored” because what Lockheed called Scorpion was one of those good news secrets. Scorpion was the closest-held U.S. aircraft program since Lockheed rolled the Stealth Fighter out of the Skunk Works almost a century before.
    After my plane landed at Le Bourget, a gratuitously pretty hostess electricarted me across a runway, weaving through crowds who circulated among displayed jets, helicopters, and associated implements of destruction. The Paris Air Show had been the world’s premier aerospace bazaar since 1908. I had attended the show once before, as a celebrity greeter peddling U.S. fire control systems to third-world dictators, who needed them like pigs needed Peugeots.
    My hostess deposited me at Lockheed’s hospitality pavilion, which was a circus tent, with foie gras where the cotton candy should have been.
    Beneath the Big Top, Munchkin sat on a raised dais, behind a skirted table. A wireless mike the size of a raisin clung to the lapel of her lipstick-red suit, which set off her olive skin and gray-streaked raven hair like Chanel had sewn it just for her. Behind her on the dais, a holo of Lockheed’s Scorpion, sleek and prototype-pearlescent white, rotated in the air like a party balloon. In front of her, a dozen adults elbowed and waved like a kindergarten class.
    I listened as Munchkin pointed out a reporter, then leaned forward, finger behind one ear, to listen to a question in French. I stood watching and listening with my arms folded, and my chest puffed a little, watching my former foxhole mate take charge. French was Munchkin’s third language. Napoleon occupied Egypt for three years. The language he left behind occupied Egypt’s prep schools ever since. She answered first in French, then in Arabic, then said in English, “I won’t quote you performance numbers. Scorpion will speak for itself in a few minutes.”
    Munchkin had just blown o n itff the guy’s question, but he smiled broadly. Most males did in Munchkin’s presence.
    The next question came from a Brit. “Congresswoman Metzger, if this C-drive is so reliable, why is Scorpion also equipped with a jet motor?”
    Munchkin the politician had dropped her hyphenated last name, “Munshara-Metzger,” at the insistence of the poll trolls. Munchkin was as sentimental as any daughter, but as pragmatic as any ex-machine gunner when traveling from point A to point B. If excess baggage jeopardized the mission, out it went. I told myself that Munchkin got elected for her smarts, hard work, and her own military record. But carrying the name of the hero who saved the human race had to have been worth a few votes.
    “It isn’t equipped with a jet.” Munchkin shook her head at the reporter, and smiled. She swiveled in her chair, toward the rotating