Rick Banik is an analyst for Emerson Partners Enterprises Corporation (EPEC).
We are told near the beginning of the first recorded adventure that that organization was a think tank, "a run-of-the-mill DC contractor that provided work for the intelligence community, the IC. EPEC drank from the terrorism spigot, a seemingly endless flow of money thrown at a problem identified in the media as the Global War on Terrorism".
Banik is "a mid-level analyst" with EPEC. In the initial introduction, he is attending a meeting of some apparently heavy-weights in the IC but, and this is important to note, he "sat along the wall .. without a seat at the big table". This would seem to suit Banik for he shows no indication he aspires to anything higher up.
Banik's position inside the company, and thus inside the overall Intelligence Community, both governmental and private, is that of someone in a cubicle who studied things and then wrote reports. Assuming as he did that EPEC charged the federal government by the word, Banik "produced enough that it would be lucrative". He was not the fastest analysts on his floor but his reports were "better, more concise, more thoroughly researched" than the others. Still he often wondered what happened to his reports after they left his desk - did anyone ever read them?
Banik is likely in his mid-to-late--30's, with blond hair, shot through with streaks of gray. He is married to Sadie, a woman he loves and respects, and has a family with her (not sure how many children but definitely more than one). "They'd make him forget the day as they always did. He couldn't talk about what he did, but they could, so he'd get them talking and he'd listen."
He had been for more than a few year a sergeant in the Marine Corps. Injured in a mortar attack he still blames himself for not having predicted, he occasionally deals with what "some might call .. PTSD but [he] preferred to think of it as the rage". He had left the military to take a better paying job with EPEC which also offered him a chance at the home-life he wanted.
Life, and employment, will change a bit for Banik over the course of the adventures we have of him but his ability to glean vital intelligence out of a mass of unrelated chaff will stay consistent.
Good Line:
- Regarding the computer system he used at EPEC, "The IT guys worked overtime. They complained that their system would be perfect if it weren't for the users."