Dewey Andreas is a former member of Delta Force.
As the series begins, he is an oil-rigger who, having worked in some of the most desolate places on the planet, is in charge of day-to-day operations for Capitana, a major oil rig off the coast of Columbia producing nearly 9% of the U.S. oil needs. While hardly able to call himself happy, he is at least somewhat content with his position and is not looking for any change, though change is forced upon him in the first recorded adventure.
Happiness is not something that Andreas would expect to get. He had it once, two decades before, when he was a decorated member of the U.S. Rangers, married, with a young son. Then cancer took his little boy and left two parents to grieve in their own way. For Andreas, it came with a chance to push himself even harder than before when an offer to join the Delta Force is presented. For his wife, it came with loneliness and apparent depression. When Andreas returned home one evening to find his wife killed with his handgun, it was undetermined by him if she had been murdered or had taken her own life and used his weapon to show him how his absence and his work was killing her.
To an ambitious prosecutor who saw this case as his great stepping stone, it was murder and Andreas was the killer. It took the jury less than an hour to rule the other way, though, and Andreas was a free man and the prosecutor in trouble with the bar. But Andreas had watched those in authority over him in the military abandon him with amazing speed when he was arrested and the idea of staying in the Service was unpleasant. Andreas resigned and disappeared. With no family left, his disappearance was a good one.
Andreas is not a man seeking adventures or excitement or danger. He had all that many years before and it turned out to be meaningless to him in the long run. He wants to be left alone. After many years of getting his way, life has forced him back into action. He does not want it but he is still quite good at it.