Vince Bellator is a freelance agent.
Well, agent is going a bit far considering that when we encounter him he is by his own admission unemployed. But that freelance part is accurate because that same admission was being "an out of work freelancer".
We learn straightaway that Bellator was "thirty-three years old, in good shape, having no trouble with the full backpack and no fear of the wilderness. An Army Ranger and Delta Force operative till three years ago, he'd always aced wilderness training." This is stated while he was hiking through the Talladega National Forest in northern Alabama to fulfill a promise to a fallen comrade.
His last name of Bellator is Latin for 'warrior', we learn a bit further in that first recorded adventure. It was the same time that one very unpleasant fellow reports what his Pentagon contact had passed along about Bellator:
"Bellator is a Yale grad, Phi Beta Kappa. Multi-athletic. Big in college triathlons. Joined the Army Rangers, took officer's training, made lieutenant. Fought in Afghanistan. Double handful of medals. Made captain. Then he transferred to Delta Force.
"His time in Delta Force is classified and we don't know what he did for them, except some of it was in Iraq, some in Somalia, and some of it was Syria, and there was one secret mission to Pakistan. There were other missions where no location is given. Then his time's done, he decides not to re-up. But the feds keep track of him. He hires on with an outfit called Pro-Active Security International. Kind of a Blackwater type situation. That went south and he quit the company. He's spent the last two years building a big house on that island in the Puget Sound, on property left to him by one 'Jack Sullivan' (aka ), an associate of his father.
"The CIA codename for him was Charon....in Greek myths, he's the boatman who takes you to Hell."