With Force

Her skin color resembled Texas tea, but she was Newark, Delaware born. Her hair was short to her head and could be brushed easily. She stood at about five feet nine inches tall. Her dimpled cheeks belied the fact that she could take down any enemy with force. She was forty-seven.

There was a beeping in the kitchen. It was the timer from her husband finishing a roasted duck. Steam issued from the oven as he prepared the perfect bird. He was six feet three inches in height. A rear admiral for the Navy, he had a somewhat considerable age difference over his wife at fifty-three, but knew that their abilities never clashed with their ages. He was the same color as nutmeg.

“Encarta, kids,” Rear Admiral Hanson Stewson called in their spacious estate via the smart system found in Bluetooth speakers throughout the house.

Encarta looked at her bags. She had prepared for a two week “vacation” away from the normal life she had led, living in Delaware. Now, she was back in the trenches gunning for that number position in the Intelligence world.

Their kids, Mala and Kalman, both twins at fifteen, sat down at the table.

“Where’s mom?” Kalman asked. The table looked exquisite. The napkins and the cutlery even looked proper and sparkling, respectively.

“You know your mother. It takes her a minute to do everything that takes hours for us mere mortals…except sit down to eat.”

Finally, Encarta arrived at the dinner table.

“Mom, we thought you vanished,” Mala said.

“Oh, don’t even start, okay?”

While she chewed through her food, Encarta’s mind ran through phases of what she would be doing in the next few days. After the marvelous meal, the twins found rest and Stewson and Encarta could finally talk.

“I’m going to be gone for a little while longer than expected,” Encarta admitted.

Stewson remained silent for three seconds. “How long?”

“It looks like a fortnight….”

“Okay. I’ll be shipping out soon, as well. Mama and Gramps will be taking care of the kids in our absence.”

A sigh from deep in Encarta’s soul allowed her to breathe.

“Good, it won’t be just me that they’ll miss. This is an extremely severe mission. It will require all of my talents and skills to combat the spread of communism and socialism. They’re two heads of the same monster but I’m willing to say that we don’t have to sacrifice thousands of kids when all it will take is the services of one woman.”

“That’s right, that’s right. I’m not allowing you. I’m aiding you in your mission to seek and destroy these vicious beasts that are circling the drain of the world.”

Stewson got up with a bottle of rosé and two glasses. He proposed a toast.

“To the elimination of all the world’s ills….”

They clinked and sipped.

The next few hours, Encarta packed almost until dawn. The sky was still an inky black. She liked it that way.

The zipper to her luggage made its last “zip.” she held her bags at her sides like she was a traveling salesperson.

“I’ll drive you to the airport and be back in time to take the twins to school.”

The Wilmington Airport in New Castle County, Delaware became her next destination. Stewson helped her with her bags and then saw her face in the glow of the lights of the building.

“You shall return,” Stewson said.

“I shall,” Encarta answered and planted a kiss on his mouth.

Stewson sped away back to Newark with the conviction that his wife knew what she was doing. During the flight, she slept. It was an easy sleep. She enveloped herself with the blankets of the personal jet.

When she woke up, she was in Beijing, China. The bitter chill sliced at her. She came prepared, however, and bundled up for the fierce Dragon country.

Jing Zhang, President of the People’s Republic of China, looked tall. He was about six feet four inches in height. He greeted Encarta with a smile.

They schmoozed. With drinks and fresh crab rolls, Zhang recounted all his triumphs in regard to the road to being the top post in the country. Encarta didn’t rely on the benefits of her digital translator. She knew Chinese from having lived there with her English professor father, Derrin Naylor. Dr. Naylor taught her how to speak it with ease and even to write it during their trips to the nation.

So, she felt at home with the language. She even got a boost by being in Intelligence. She passed those language tests with aplomb. Now, as she sat beside the pernicious head of the Communist Party in China, she felt her pistol in her back pocket shift. In English, Zhang requested that Encarta follow him to his private study. She abided. He disrobed and expected Encarta to perform the same function. As she was about to take off her clothes she took hold of her firearm. Slowly, she walked up behind Zhang who was splashing water in a hot tub. A gay smile plastered across his face until he saw the muzzle of her suppressor. She fired a single shot which turned the water crimson. She gathered her things with haste and returned to the car which brought her there.

Despite the knowledge that Russia wasn’t technically a Communist State anymore, she still wanted to pay Viktor Orlov a visit.

Once she arrived in Moscow, she viewed the Kremlin for probably the eighth time in her career. This time was different, obviously. She wasn’t collecting reconnaissance. She readied herself to be the killer of statist scum. She greeted Orlov’s lair. The state of the art system paled in comparison to the abject poverty that his people witnessed on a daily basis. Pictures hanging on the wall showed Orlov shaking hands with the American president among other world dignitaries. Encarta just pressed forward. Orlov found his armchair and started to speak. Now, she needed the assistance of the wireless translator.

“I’m glad that you have come all of this way.”

“Thank you, Mr. President. I’m glad, too,” her Russian was rusty but it still could be understood.

“Why don’t we go somewhere a little more intimate?”

She wished he hadn't said that. At the same time, it would be just like in China; get them while at their most vulnerable, she told herself.

In a secret den further cut into the Kremlin, Encarta followed the president deeper still. There remained an Olympic sized pool with ten alabaster white women about eighteen and nineteen years old completely in the nude.

“You can disrobe and don’t worry about your color. I like a little cocoa with my marshmallows.” He sneered and then exited to a side room to change. Encarta waited a good twelve seconds before following him.

She brought her pistol and suppressor. As she crept up to Orlov in the same fashion, she steadied her aim, he quickly came out stark naked and she put the gun behind her.

“You’re not undressed yet? Don’t be shy. You just––” The translator failed. Now it was just a grab at sentences and what she had learned back at Intelligence.

A smile curled around Encarta’s lips. She backed up against a wall. She remembered a single phrase that a Russian prostitute once told her. It meant, “come to bed with me.” She called above the splashing and idle chatter that the other women were making. Orlov stopped and looked directly at Encarta.

He began to get changed again. In the instant that he donned his clothes, Encarta was already waiting for him at the entrance to the locker room. He looked up and saw the slight flash from the matte weapon.

“Go to hell, you bastard,” Encarta voiced and Orlov dropped to the floor in a bloody mess.

Encarta got the hell out of there. On the car ride to the airport, she checked her translator. It needed to be charged.

“Goddamnit!” Encarta snapped.

“Is everything alright?” the driver asked.

“Yes, yes. Thank you.”

News services begin to stitch together stories of world Communist leaders being slain. Two seemed too many. Not for Encarta. Her run included her next targets that she would remove from power at the end of a pistol. This just meant that she had to be even smoother, more deadly, stealth.

Upon her arrival in Southern Vietnam, she encountered the president who had beefed up security. Huy Duong, the nation’s youngest leader at thirty-eight, greeted Encarta. She observed the extra gunmen posted around the president. No, she thought, this won’t be quite as easy. She considered her tried and true method of allowing them to be in their most defenseless position and then blow them away. This wouldn’t be the case for her now. She had been notified about an United States naval ship just off the coast that had helicopters. One such bird would be there in less than an hour. At that time, she set a watch, looked at Duong and smiled. The translator was fully charged. He smiled back. She asked him if he was afraid of an attack on his life.

“Oh, no,” he replied, “I’m above all forms of force against me.” He continued smiling. When the buzzer sounded, that gave her enough time to enter a car and head for the airport. In about ten minutes, a helicopter swept through and struck Duong’s house. Encarta felt the rumble of the blast as she came through the concourse. Once she was on the Tarmac, she looked at her phone. The headline read, “Another world leader is dead.”

On her trip to Laos, she disguised herself as a photojournalist who wished to see the remaining Communist leaders. Her camera was actually a tiny gun. President Alani Khan was about five feet five inches. He took Encarta’s hand as the military men showed their semi-automatic rifles. He broke down his walls. She increased the volume on her translator.

“No, I’m not afraid of death. I have many men who will protect me from the onslaught of an assassin. I know that some of the other world leaders fell. I won’t though.” She snapped the picture of Khan which was actually a suppressed gunshot and left Khan sitting in his chair. Any onlookers would’ve thought he was asleep. Still, Encarta had to be speedy before they actually found the president to be terminated.

Cuba seemed like no sweat to Encarta. At least it appeared as such. She got off the plane and welcomed the warm weather. The balmy breeze encouraged her to find President Bembe Jimenez. Once she finally met him, she had already known that her appearance would proceed her. She also knew that she didn’t need the translator as she knew fluent Spanish. The guards all surrounded her and President Jimenez as he began to call for them to draw down their weapons. In this weather, the two of them relocated to his massive indoor pool. In this instance, it is just the two of them together. Jimenez called back his guards.

“I know America struck in Vietnam. I weep for my Communist brother in the struggle,” Jiminez said.

“I feel for you, Mr. President,” Encarta said in Spanish.

He turned to disrobe. She pulled out her pistol but it jammed. She searched for the rounds in the camera around her neck. The jammed pistol had them but Jiminez was already walking back with glasses of chilled rum in his hands. “One for you, my darling.” Encarta gritted her teeth at that remark.

“No, gracias.”

“You’ve got that camera. Are you taking pictures now?”

“No, no. Just making sure I have enough to shoot,” she answered. She said it with a sense of conviction that the words held a double meaning.

“Hey, get a picture of me with the booze!”

“I can’t. I’m all out.”

“Such a shame.” Jiminez placed the drinks on the table and started swimming laps.

“Get changed. There should be some suits and cap for you. Come in, the water is fine. Take a little sip of the rum before you hop in. It’s nice!”

Encarta ventured over to the glasses of rum. She extracted from her photojournalist jacket a packet of cyanide and slipped it in Jiminez’s drink. It was enough to kill in five minutes. She picked up her drink and waited. He was doing backstrokes with his eyes closed. He reached the end of the pool and opened his eyes. He doggy paddled his way to the steps leading to the pool. He toweled off himself.

Encarta watched him drink as he walked over to her. He smiled and sipped. He downed the entire drink. His step became inconsistent and the smile disappeared. He stepped and then banged his head against the cement ground like a crash test car slams into a wall.

She collected her pistol and camera and quickly serviced them in the Yank Tank ride to the airport. She heard the wail and saw the flashing lights of Cuban police officers. Her heart pounded. The cavalcade of cars ran in front of them to some other vehicle. Encarta sighed. With quickness, she had fixed the jam in the pistol and also traded some rounds to the camera.

On the plane ride to South Korea, she watched a video asking “Who’s killing the Communist leaders?” She smirked. It wasn’t a smirk of enjoyment but of full knowledge of what she had done and what she planned to do.

Iciness surrounded her when she entered North Korea. Both in the temperature sense and in the sense of welcoming and ideas. She ensured that she did not bring the gun. But she did remember her Korean. Dad taught that to her along with the Chinese. Supreme Leader Jeong-ho Pham looked like he was fifty-five years old. He walked with a slight limp. His face was full, though, he had eaten well and his country had starved. He greeted Encarta, nonetheless, with reverence and gratitude. He was forty.

“I thank you very much,” he said, “I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting a black.” That’s it, Encarta thought. They either were in disbelief that she could carry out the kills because she was black or a woman or both. No one suspected that she had sent the men to their deaths, so Pham told his staff to not be so hostile with the weapons drawn.

“I know how your people dance,” Pham said. “I’d like to show you my bedroom so you can dance for me.”

“I’d love to do that,” she said in excellent Korean.

With clothes still clinging to her body, Pham sat in a chair in the dark. A tiny bit of redness drifted upward and downward as he puffed on a cigar. “Please, feel free.”

Encarta stepped forward without dancing, only in a seductive manner. With her alluring stroll, she found the Supreme Leader and took the cigar. She sniffed it. Then, she told Pham to open wide.

“And close your eyes,” she said. With her left hand, she stuffed the cigar in his mouth and with her right she clamped down on his nose. Her strength overpowered the weakling leader both physically and mentally. She held on for a good two minutes until Pham had fully suffocated.

She journeyed over to the bathroom and washed her hands.

Then she heard the rifles cock.

They carried her to a prison cell. She faced charges of assassination and the North Korean courts sentenced her to death. The speedy trial consisted of an opposing lawyer delivering the sentence. As she waited for the next moment to pass, Encarta had been aware that her back up in South Korea would save her at any minute once given the news that she was captured.

This rang true as Marine Raiders, Air Force Special Tactics team, Army Rangers, and Navy SEALs all descended upon the palace. Mostly made of men, the special teams ensured Encarta’s rescue.

In their tactical snow gear, the teams converged and took out the remaining leaders. Soon, Encarta saw freedom again on a shuttle to South Korea. She smiled again.

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