MARK ERICKSEN

Mark Ericksen is the CEO of EyeD4.

Well, he is an executive vice president of the company initially but he will get the bump up.

EyeD4 is "a biometrics technology firm, utilizing both the Iris and the Palm Vein patterns in access control and encryption communications". That is hi-tech talk for a revolutionary and proprietary system of communications which scans both the user's eyeball and his/her palm print to ensure only authorized personnel can use it. Couple that with highly encrypted transmission and you have a system of extremely secure comms. This is very much desired by the military. It is also coveted by the same people the military is hunting, namely terrorists.

The action for the Ericksen books take place just about a decade after 9/11. Ericksen, born in 1970, is nearing his 40th birthday but he has the physique of a man a good deal younger because of his near-obsessive determination to keep in shape with constant rigorous exercise.

We are told in both prose and in a CIA fact sheet that Ericksen was a Dane at birth, born in Copenhagen but moving with his parents to the States at a fairly young age, raised in the state of Washington. He earned a computer science degree from OSU where he was also an All-American wrestler.

He used that degree to get a commission when he joined the US Navy in 1992. He was selected for the elite SEAL program and served with SEAL Team 8 from '93-'98. After being switched to Team 6 he would engage in highly classified ops throughout the Middle East before the start of the second Gulf War and the resultant tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ericksen is a widower, having married his adored Karen in 2000 but losing her in a car accident while he was overseas just over a year later.

A terrible situation turned horrible in Afghanistan when Ericksen, on strident orders from his superior, killed an Afghan colleague suspected to be a Talib informer only to learn soon after the man was innocent. The anger and guilt that he felt for his boss as well as the CIA was intense and he resigned his commission. The PTSD he would endure over the following years was horrific and he never lost his distrust.

That makes it interesting when, a few years later, the CIA comes to him asking for his help.

I like an occasional series about someone in business getting mixed-up, almost invariably without meaning to, in covert activities. It is the intriguing idea of a largely competent man in one field being a fish-out-of-water in another. This one is a tad different, though, and that made it even more interesting because it was so different.

Here we have a fellow who was happily in business - by that I mean not in the clandestine world - but had extensive training in taking care of himself so when bad guys start coming after him, well, he instinctively reverts to his other training and, dang!

This does not mean he is perfect in both but he sure can surprise folks not expecting him to have any such skills. And that makes it a lot of fun for us readers.