Beta Force is a team of two agents with the GIC.
The Global Intelligence Commission id "one of the most secretive agencies in Washington". We are told early on that "everyone knew about the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA. Most people were aware of MI5 and MI6. Then, of course, there was Interpol and a half-dozen other entities around the world of the same ilk that rarely got much attention, at least in the States. ... The GIC was one that kept the lowest of profiles. There were only a few other agencies like it in the country, or even on the planet."
Inside that fairly large organization - certainly they have a good number of agents out in the field and a fair number in the cafeteria awaiting missions - there is no group named 'Beta Force' until it was unceremoniously created by the GIC Director at the spur of the moment to designate its two sole members: Zeke Marshall and Phoenix Underwood. Not too much later it will be extended for two more. Beta Force was formed by that leader to give the two original members a sense of importance for their first official mission; never mind that that mission was as a decoy and had a secondary goal of hopefully seeing the agents seriously and permanently dead. Why they were so earmarked is something best left to the reader to discover.
The two operatives of Beta Force, Marshall and Underwood, are best friends and have been since, apparently, college.
Zeke Marshall "had been working in the accounting department as an analyst for the GIC. Three, painfully boring years he'd unwillingly followed in his father's footsteps, going to work for the GIC. He'd wanted to go his own way, make his own path, but Zeke never had much of a spine when it came to his old man. Inevitably, he always did what daddy wanted. ... [Now] he was just a number cruncher, a cubicle jockey. Any dreams he may have had about going out into the field and taking down the bad guys couldn't have been further away."
Marshall "liked to think he had a sort of goofy adorability about him. He wasn't ugly. His hair was cut fairly short and swept to one side, partially spiked on top. He was decently tall at six feet, and slender but athletic. Zeke worked out all the time, though it didn't seem to help him bulk up". Nevertheless, he was stuck it seemed permanently in Accounts; he often tried to put a positive note on it by musing, "Only twentysomething more years of this crap to go".
Phoenix Underwood was "about five feet eleven inches, and 170 pounds with scraggly brown hair and matching eyes. He had a goofy, casual demeanor most of the time". He works in the GIC because he "followed his friend ... into working for the GIC. The brainwork part of the testing and selection phase hadn't been difficult. Phoenix was brilliant, a 4.0 student in high school and college. He'd earned a master's degree while Zeke was still "figuring out his path." Phoenix knew what that meant. During college, Zeke had spent more time chasing girls than studying. Phoenix didn't judge, but he was glad he'd put in the time and effort. Now he had a solid government paycheck, a decent 1,200-square-foot home, and his trusty Honda. And that didn't even factor in the benefits. It wasn't a horrible gig. That's what he told himself, anyway. All he had to do was sit back, put in his thirty years, and then enjoy retirement".
Both had gone through the require training to become agents, both "knew how to fight-both armed and unarmed - and the rest of the standard curriculum but there was no doubt that neither was really operative material. And yet now they are Beta Force.
The other two members to be brought in are:
Jessica Benson, an actual agent with "years of experience" and "an expert in foreign cultures, business, and military operations". She, too, had fallen foul of the Director and now was paying for it by being named the handler of the pair.
Gary Freeman, an inoffensive and brilliant techie, he was "a scrawny guy, probably 155 pounds dripping wet" normally dressed in a white button-up shirt and often mistaken for someone to the Geek Squad or one of its knockoffs. His joining the team was solely due to its needing a tech and Marshall and Underwood both knew his name.