Name: Joseph Donnelley
Age: 43
Gender: Male
Appearance:
Not what most think of when they hear the word 'international spy for the CIA.' Perhaps that's the point all along. Not dashing, not suave, but dark in his way, he stands at an even 6', sinewy-muscled, and always moves deliberately until it's time for action. Two bullet wounds can be seen, paler than the rest of his skin, just under his ribs on his left side. He walks with the slightest limp and grimace whenever signs of rain start to show. His voice has traces of Texan in the words when he isn't trying to mask it and he always speaks in a measured tone. This coupled with his natural deliberate demeanor as well as resting sad-smile'd, kind-eye'd face gives the impression of a stern man, stern but fair.
His green eyes are nothing if not a little disarming and only adds to the calm air about him. He has had years and years of practice to keep a straight face even when his thoughts are screaming and heart is racing, after all, in the games of life and death that are so common in his line of work, it's at least good if you can fake it until you make it. A team leader should be the last one to tuck tail and panic. A gaunt face with a burn scar that descends down his neck from an accident where his vehicle had been caught on fire somewhere in Chechnya lends a sort of sad air to the man that the endless war against the inevitable has created. Under the sad smile, the bonds he creates, everything, he knows one day this life will come to a nasty end for him. It doesn't mean he'll make it easy for the bastards. Like a street dog bearing its teeth at falling bombs.
Agency/Organization: CIA Directorate of Operations, Paramilitary Operations Officer, SAD/SOG Ground Branch, Clearance: Delta Green
Education: A sum of 20 years in the US Army Rangers, then passing through SFAS to earn a place in the Green Berets. 8 years in the CIA.
Background: Joseph Donnely joined the Army when he was eighteen, a young whippersnapper and son of a motorcycle mechanic, out of Texas with a need to prove to himself that he could be more than what he was. He always figured that the Army would be his only way out of the shithole town he'd lived in in rural West Texas. Being one of only a very small group of kids that liked skateboarding and angry music instead of standing around and listening to country in a parking lot had seen him getting into a fair few scraps in his time, only serving to toughen him up even moreso when his father wasn't around to do it himself. It was because of his father's alcoholism and uncontrolled PTSD from his tours in Vietnam that had seen Joseph embarking on his early life of drugs, crime, and rotten debauchery rather than stay home. Eventually this all culminated into him joining a Hardcore Crew, what amounted to the Hardcore Punk scene's motorcycle clubs and street gangs. It would take him the loss of his best friend to a drive-by shooting in Dallas and his girlfriend overdosing on heroin that had him finally realizing his plans of joining the military.
His initial four-year contract being up, in which he attended the US Army Airborne School, he returned to his small Texas town to become a Sheriff's deputy with a hard head and an even harder ass, apparently. It was around this time that he became known endearingly as Robocop among the town kids, with which he always tried to maintain a rapport with. He was famous in his little Texas town for being Sherriff Gracy's golden boy, trying to clean up the county on his lonesome. Around this time he'd met a girl named Holly French, and as they say, the rest is history. Though, his reputation as a risk-taking, motivated individual was obviously not what a small town Sheriff's department needed, and so after only two years as a Deputy he re-enlisted at the behest of Sheriff Gracy and a couple of his friends, promising to Holly that he would stay safe.
This time around, Joseph had an easier go of things, but Joseph had a reputation for proving to himself that he could be more than he was. He attended RIP, the Ranger Indoctrination Program, and passed with colors. He spent these four years as a US Army Ranger and was deployed to Afghanistan following the War on Terror, in which he knew that the promise made to Holly was now out of his hands and right into God's own. He took part in five raids over the course of two combat rotations, assisting Green Beret ODAs, SEAL teams and Delta Force. He reenlisted directly after his four years were up and requested a slot in SFAS, in which he again struggled through the grueling two-year selection process and spent the following 4 years in Washington, his new home, with the 1st Special Forces Group deployed to Afghanistan.
On one fateful day, CIA spook William Long would arrive at his isolated FOB nestled in the Afghan mountains. The briefing told him that his ODA and the indigenous fighters they'd gathered around themselves would be helping William carry out his mission of making contact with one Bazir al-Khalwadi, a tribal leader among the reclusive Wadi clan. The specifics of this mission were not told to Special Forces Intelligence Sergeant Joseph Donnely, but like any good soldier, he did what needed doing. The section of Joseph Donnely's dossier dealing with this operation is highly classified, but Donnely knew they had illegally crossed the Pakistani border by the time they had found their target. Nestled in the tribal areas of northern Pakistan, they found the village and the asset. From his binoculars, he saw them dancing around him, heard the faint sounds of their singing and chanting and screaming, the cacophony somehow making his head hurt even from such a distance. What was worse was he felt like he was starting to understand it more the longer they watched through their binoculars.
He saw the Pakistani chief tied down to a block of stone so black almost as to be made of void itself. He saw them put the knife to Bazir's throat and saw the man's neck open. He saw them butcher his corpse and paint with his blood. Long read off coordinates and a glint in the sky showed the speck high above them, a predator drone. Two missiles leveled that tiny village and made a crater of the mountainside it was on. They trekked back to the FOB, not speaking of what they saw. He couldn't sleep though, he could've swore he saw that block of stone start to change shape, bending and warping just enough to be noticed before dust and rocks and carnage flew up from the initial impact of that first JDAM. Ask Joseph about his time in Afghanistan and he will harden up, wishing they didn't stop at just two of the big bombs. “If it were up to me, those mountains would be bombed to sand.”
He came back to Washington a changed man. The Army may have made him more serious, more “mature”, but that operation in the Pakistani mountains made him distant and cold. At least, that's the way Holly put it to him. He began to grow increasingly violent with each night where sleep was somewhere far off and away. Holly put it in no uncertain terms that she was leaving after an incident at their daughters' school led to him having to be escorted off the premises by school security. He came under fire from his NCOIC and was told that if he didn't shape up, he would no longer find any place among the ODAs. He said the promise, the words left his mouth, but they were hollow. With Holly gone, he turned to the bottle most nights.
In 2010, his enlistment would be up. He wasn't as bothered now by what he saw in the Pakistani mountains those years ago, chocking it up to the stresses of the long march and witnessing the brutal display before him. Even so, he still has to take his medication some nights, and he still might drink and think and fool himself one more time. Those gibbering chants and screams would haunt his dreams, and on those nights, he refused to sleep. Dreams brought him back there, and back there was a place he never wanted to go. Even so, a quiet and peaceful life was not what he was searching for either. He was approached by CIA recruiters and has been involved with clandestine operations in Eastern Europe, North Africa and Central Asia- with a very specific personal request that he stay away from operations that would take him to Pakistan. In 2017, his home a dingy apartment in Turkey and office-space a warehouse being used as a CIA blacksite for less-than-legal interrogations, he was called back stateside for the first time in seven years, where he was told he would once again be working with Case Officer Steve Foster for the first time since Somalia- his first one of two prior operation under the cases with clearance level “DELTA GREEN.” The prospect does not delight him.
Personality: Joseph grew up in the good ol' countryside of West Texas to an alcoholic, 'Nam vet father and a mother too scared to leave but too timid to defend herself. Joseph vowed that he would make something of himself and not end up like his Vietnam-vet father. That thick shell of spite and anger propelled him like a bullet through a life of hard partying and, later on, high-risk careers.
Now though, at the creaky age of 43, he's starting to feel the years in his joints. The mind is still there, albeit tempered by years of experience in the Rangers and the Green Beretes, but the mind wanders to old places at times. He's still ready and able to kick doors or interrogate targets, and has never had qualms with bending the rules to get the right guy or achieve the objective. The way he sees it, you can't ask a man to live with the pigs and expect him to not get muddy. The law smiles on means, he smiles on results. With his time in the CIA to foster an even darker and unfettered side of this rule-bending he so loved to justify, he no longer attaches any pretense of a “just war.” With the things he's seen, he knows there are only one right thing and one wrong thing in a war, especially this one-
it is good to win and it is wrong to lose.
After witnessing the bureaucracy and yellow tape hinder so many operations and kill good men just trying to serve their country in the field, he has grown thoroughly disillusioned with the images of grandeur and hyper-competent shadow killers that dust terrorists and cult leaders as easy as breathing. In his words, “We were wrong to think we could shoulder everything. We thought we were supermen. Special Forces, four commandos could replace an entire army. How fucking wrong.”
Despite this, so to speak, he imagines Sisyphus happy. He knows that if it isn't him doing this dirty work to keep humanity living blissfully ignorant to the truth of just how close to doom they are, it would just be somebody else. That just wouldn't do any good, though, he doesn't trust anybody else with this burden.When nervous situations arise, he may respond by trying at bits of odd humor. It was always a good practice to try to laugh before an operation and he keeps that as a tradition to this day. After a very long time both in the service and the agency, the man behind the shell of spite and anger has been starting to peek through the cracks and gouges. He shakes hands with rebel leaders and crooked generals, he wears smiles in the boardrooms as easily as frowns in the interrogation rooms. The world may need bad men, but the side of him that isn't devoted to the agency wished he made friends more and yearns for the old days of the ODAs and the Ranger Battalions. Wished he was a better father, wished he was a better husband. Wished he would've punched his father and hugged his mother more. Anyhow, he's here now, nothing to do but the mission.
Likes: Quiet nights bonding with his team, sunsets, campfires, different landscapes, experiencing different cultures, skateboarding, metal and hardcore punk, 80s/90s gangster rap
Dislikes: The paranormal, abusers of any kind, bureaucrats, corrupt leaders, weak leaders, hypocrisy
Fears: Joseph's only family he knows now are the teams he's placed with. No matter how long it takes, he will bond with them over something, and they will start to like each other at best or have a grudging respect at worst. Either way, his biggest fear is the day he fails them. Walks them into an ambush, causes their death due to his incompetence, watches them being swallowed slowly by the maddening things some cruel universe permits or is helpless in letting exist.
He also fears going mad himself, a bullet kept in a safe place just for that day. He knows it will come for him one day, if the things he fights don't get to him first. He's seen it happen to many in his line of work, but seeing it so many times hasn't dulled the sharp pain from each one.
He knows that his daughter is out there somewhere, his wife with a better man. Both of them part of a family he will never get to see and with smiles he now can only get from them in memories. He has access to the world's most advanced database and every mean on the planet to find them. But seeing them happy, no, letting them see him as he is now. It would kill him just as cruelly as the things he's put down.
Skills:
Gifted(+5): Interrogation | Marksmanship, Long Guns
Adept(+3): SERE | Marksmanship, handguns | Awareness
Average(+2): Tactical Driving | Subterfuge | Persuasion
Novice(+1): Psychology | Breaking-and-Entering | Criminology | Hand-to-Hand
Languages: Pashto, Spanish, Turkish
Weaknesses: Unscrupulous – Once on the job, his personality makes him almost single-minded in completing the mission, no matter the lengths to which he must go. This has put him at ends with foreign agencies multiple times, as well as many a missed meal and sleepless night.
Insomnia – He has night terrors some nights if he goes to bed without taking his medication.
Slight depression/PTSD - His experiences in the Pakistani mountains have left something of an impression upon him. Because of this, some nights he drinks and thinks until he sleeps.
Aches & Pains – He lost a small bit of flexibility in his left ankle, as well as right shoulder from breakage. He won't be running six minute miles anytime or lifting logs over his head, but he can still pull a trigger and push a sewing needle under someone's fingernails when kind gestures don't work.
Off-Duty Clothing/Equipment:
Clothing: Black t-shirt and zip-up hoodie under a windbreaker, jeans, oxfords or sneakers. May or may not don his Thrasher cap.
Weapons: He carries a folding knife and an FN FNH40.
Tools/Equipment: A wallet with fabricated ID as well as legal identification. 200 dollars in the local currency. A leatherman multi-tool. Pen light. Notepad and pen. Ziptie handcuffs, 4.
Misc.: His medication, a pack of cigarettes, a seemingly neverending flask of bourbon, communications earpiece, bluetooth headset connected to his encrypted team smartphone.
Operational Clothing/Equipment:
Clothing: In urban areas, he dons a black t-shirt with jeans and low-profile tactical shoes or simple sneakers. Black Mechanix gloves, balaclava, ballistic vest w/ “NIGHT TIME IS THE RIGHT TIME” morale patch, lightweight special operations helmet or a Thrasher cap depending on where the current outing falls on the sliding scale of stakeout to shitshow. Black pullover hoodie if things get chilly. Wouldn't be complete without a sleek pair of shades.
In areas not urban and requiring more equipment, he wears fatigues with camo patterns befitting the environment.
Weapons: An AAC Honey Badger with a foregrip, EOTech and a PEQ infrared laser sight. Serbu Super Shorty 12 gauge shotgun. An FN FNH40. Combat knife. 4 flashbang grenades. 4 fragmentation grenades.
Tools/Equipment: NVGs, flashlight, pen flares, and glowsticks for when night time is the right time. Leatherman multi-tool, ziptie handcuffs, 10.
Misc.: Maps of the area, a compass, markers, pens, first aid equipment, a pack of cigarettes, two-way comm headset. Laptop or tablet cleared for TS/SCI/DG.
