John Smith is an agent for the CIA and leader of the Killsquad.
In the wake of several vicious terrorist attacks, the President asked four men to come up with a scheme to combat the growing threat. The Director of the CIA, that Agency's Deputy Director, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the head of Air Force Intelligence were chosen to put together the solution. The answer they came up with was one no one liked but the best they could create.
The solution was the World Strike Force, a covert CIA operation led by veteran Langley operative John Smith, a man with a special hatred for terrorists after the death years ago of his wife at the hands of another such group.
It would be the job of John Smith to collect six hardened criminals from Death Row and make a paramilitary squad capable of rapid response in the trouble spots of the world. They would operate outside the law to help protect it. They would be answerable to the four men, each of whom did not want them to exist.
That dislike of the concept these four leaders had come up with and even more disdain for the men who comprised the team remains throughout the history of their actions. One might think that loathing might have been eased a bit over time considering the number of successful missions that group complete.
The similarities of this series to The Dirty Dozen is too obvious to not acknowledge. The men start out disliking each other and possessing an innate hatred for authority but pressure from Smith brings them around quickly and they begin to work as an elite force.
The men in the Killsquad know that failure to obey orders would get them killed. On the other hand, obeying the orders would likely get the same result. At least with the latter, they get a chance to take some bad guys with them or, better yet, send them on ahead.