Mark Landry is a security consultant.
Officially, at least. On paper and for the record.
When we first meet him he is returning home after several years abroad on one mission or another. He mused once that his job was never done because "there were places to go, things to do, and bad people to track and occasionally kill".
Just over twenty years before the first recorded adventure, when he was ready to graduate high school, he had already joined the U.S. Army and was headed to basic training. He had hoped four years in the military would help him figure out what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. After boot camp came his desired Ranger training and he was one of the few to make it through.
But the four years he originally intended turned to twelve and would have certainly gone the full twenty when he was approached on the base in Afghanistan where he was stationed by the gray-haired man who identified himself as Dunbar. The offer was simple. Leave the uniform behind and go work for the ultra-secret intelligence group known simply as 'the Family'.
The work he would be doing was off the books black-ops, work that no other organization wanted to be caught thinking about let alone doing. He was very, very good at it, and he would do it for nearly a decade.
Landry was the adopted son of Agnes Landry, a former nun who had left her profession when the new-born Mark was handed to her for safe-keeping and never looked back. Agnes taught German in the local Catholic school and Mark learned it while learning English. Also playing a major influence on him was Father Peck, a friend of his mother, and it was from Peck he learned much of the skills he would later use in life. "The priest taught him wrestling, judo, and some other mixed martial arts. Rough as hell but not abusive." And since both Agnes and Peck spent a lot of their time helping out in the community which had a strong Latino population, his knowledge of Spanish became as good as the German. Languages would prove no problem for him. Agnes and Peck both supported his desire to serve his country and through the years they were his family back home and he visited whenever time permitted.
It was the accidental death of Agnes from a fall that brought him back home to Lawrence, MA. And it was in his hometown that he again met an old flame, Luci Alvarez, a police officer in the city. And that gave him reason to stay.
Except for the occasional job for the government.