Sam Rollins is an agent with Black Force.
As explained in a similar write-ups for fellow agents and , Black Force is an unofficial American military operation, conceived and created by upper echelon officers, "top of the food chain" as King refers them, to take on the missions that they felt needed to be done but which few in their right mind would attempt and certainly none would admit to. As a completely off-book organization but financed through funneling from legitimate projects, it sent its men all over the world to handle "things that never would have ordinarily been sanctioned". The man in charge of this "group that didn't exist" is Lars Crawford and it was Crawford who personally vetted and selected the members of the group, pulling each man from the various Special Forces organizations in the U.S. military.
Each of these agents are considered solo acts, sent in alone to handle a mission and fully prepared to suffer the consequences if something goes pear-shaped. The isolationism is probably a good thing because for the most part, these operatives do not really play well with others, which, come to think of it, might have been one of the original reasons for the 'one mission - one man' directive.
"Black Force had never been advertised as an easy gig. In fact, it had never been advertised at all. The job had no official protocol and no rigid instructions".
Rollins is 28 years old when we first meet him. He has been on the job with Black Force for just four months and is on his second mission. His first was, in his opinion, a cookie cutter assignment freeing a hostage in Chicago where normal means were not available so Black Force and Rollins got the call.
Our meeting takes place while he is paying for having been caught on his second job, a mission to Peru which will find him in a prison in the Andes Mountains. He gets freed by King and learns a bit a humility (well, the time in his cell helped there) and he also learned that the primary aptitude that Black Force uses for selecting its operatives, beside being able and willing to do the job, is quickness. Being just a tad faster than anyone else, including reacting faster, makes all the difference. Rollins is pretty fast.
Good Line:
- While in a Peruvian prison, Rollins is accosted by an angry guard: "The giant guard spat something in Spanish and jabbed the barrel of the Kalashnikov through the steel bars to try and intimidate [Rollins]. He might as well have handed it to Rollins on a silver platter."