Jack McCall is an agent with the CIA.
He is a twenty-year veteran of the Agency having worked all over the globe in places both beautiful and deadly and had earned a reputation as a man who got the job done, usually without fuss or backdraft. He enjoyed it for most of those years and had never really considered anything else. Then came the death of his younger brother, also an agent, in the Middle East. The fact that it had been the elder McCall who was the operations manager on the project weighed heavily on him despite knowing it has been a tip from a Kuwaiti base worker that had alerted the targets, not any fault in the planning.
McCall could have taken a much safer job. He certainly does not do it for the money since he had enough to live quite comfortably without working thanks to a Canadian grandfather who had used "his knowledge of the Great Lakes to slip Canadian whiskey into the States" during Prohibition. His father had moved the family into the Chesapeake area and legitimized the holdings while also serving as an officer in the U.S. Navy, which meant that the two McCall's could have done just aboue anything with their lives. But their father's work ethic had been passed on to them which meant taking it easy was not really an option.
Still, the enjoyment of being in the field was gone with his brother's death and McCall had, on his 46th birthday, been promoted to a desk job as a "special assistant for strategy and planning to the Director of Central Intelligence". He had bought a house and was settling down. It was expected that his days of putting his own behind on the line were over.
Then the President asked for a favor.