Robb Spears

"I used to be just like you, son. I used to think that to serve my country with a beret on my brow and a gun in my hand would be the most glorious thing a man could do. But then the truth came and hit me like a freight train - it's all for nothing. The fighting will never stop because our government is far too proud, far too self-righteous, to stay put for one single moment. I've lost my men, my family, my dignity in the name of my country...and I'm sick of it! I'm sick of serving the United States, when the United States doesn't care. You don't understand me. Given time...you would have."

- Robb Spears explaining his motivations Robert "Robb" Spears was a field officer who commanded the US Marine Corps, Army Rangers, Task Force 107 and his own black-operations military squadron dubbed The Hunters. He is first seen as a supporting character in Vengeance, but is revealed to be the true main antagonist of the game, having influenced all of the events seen in the game. He is voiced and portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones.

Early life
Robert Spears was born in Chicago on the 4th of September 1970. Little is known about his childhood, but it is known that he dreamt of joining the army and serving his country - a dream that displeased his parents. When he was seventeen, he signed up for the army, but was turned down after his psychological evaluations hinted at a disturbed and warped mind. He worked to hide this psychological flaw and, after his seventh try, he succeeded in being recruited. He trained extremely hard, becoming a profusely dedicated soldier, until the time came for him to serve his country properly for the first time.

Military Career and Tragedy
He served as a marine in the Gulf War and participated in the Desert Storm, where he served with incredible distinction according to his peers. After being shot in the stomach by a sniper whilst covering one of his comrades, he was put on leave but refused to take his leave, wanting intensely to continue serving his country. He later served in Afghanistan until he rose to the rank of Major, where he led Task Force 107 in Iraq. He received a number of medals for his accomplishments in combat, but none of them are particularly named.

At one point, he was assigned to protect a US Senator in Alaska, where they were ambushed by Iraqi terrorists calling themselves Cell 101. Spears personally protected the President and escorted him to safety, earning him a medal of honour and promotion to the rank of General However, when a group of terrorists raided Chicago in 2010, Spears led his squadron in an attempt to save the number of hostages they had taken in a mall. He lost most of his men in the series of tactical movements that led to him sneaking into the mall and killing off the terrorists, one-by-one. He suffered a severe burn to the underside of his face when a terrorist threw a grenade in his direction.

He fought his way through the terrorists to the rooftop of the mall, where the terrorist leader Malik - whom Spears recognized from the ambush in Alaska - was holding Spears' wife and child at gunpoint. Spears fired, killing Malik, but not before the terrorist sent a bullet through the skulls of his wife and child. Spears became so enraged that he emptied his entire clip into the chest of the already-dead Malik, screaming with rage. He was retrieved by helicopter from the roof of the plaza and put on leave due to post-traumatic stress disorder, but he appeared to have recovered six months later.

Nemesis
Spears was certainly traumatised by the ordeal - which was worsened by the psychological disorder caused by the burns to his face. He was given the opportunity to retire from the military, but he refused, instead deciding to stay on as general and command his men from behind the lines. However, this was all a deception: Spears developed the epiphany, whilst hospitalized from his injuries, that the American government didn't care if he lived or died, so long as he aided his country - it didn't matter if he lost his entire family in service to them, they didn't care. He decided to make an example of himself, and set up a secret alliance of soldiers and politicians just like him, and allied with the terrorist cells in Russia, founding his own terrorist organisation which he simply called Nemesis.

Taking his revenge
He started his revenge by organising an assassination attempt on the President of the United States. He did this by arranging for Sam Reeves - whose father had served alongside Spears in his earlier battles - to be promoted a Medal of Honour for his courage in battle on the same day of the assassination, knowing that he would be experienced enough to protect the President from the assassin at the cost of his own life. However, this plan partly backfires - while Reeves succeeded in saving the President, he was not mortally wounded at all, and even managed to kill the assassin.

Seeing an alternative option, Spears, through Russian politician Alexei Gregorovitch, anonymously manipulated Cell 101 into entering Afghanistan and taking an American squadron hostage. He also enlisted Sam Reeves for the Hunters, tasking them with rescuing the hostages. He hoped that Reeves and the Hunters - the United States' best non-secret military squadron - would be eliminated in the process, as well as the hostages and most of Cell 101, which he saw as poetic justice for his family's murder. However, though the hostages were killed - by explosives that Spears himself set off once their captors were killed by the Hunters - and most of the terrorists also killed, Reeves survived, a bullet meant for him taken by his comrade Buzzard. Spears did, though, realize that he had a subtler success, in that Reeves was disgraced for the massacre and demoted to Private.

Spears still decided that the US government was not disgraced enough, though, and tasked the Hunters with infiltrating a Chinese military base and using it as an outpost in the upcoming conflict with Russia. He also had the computer systems on the boat hacked so that, if they tried to call for aid, it wouldn't go to the US, but to the Russians, saying that they had ambushed a Russian convoy. This would provoke the Russians into hunting down the Hunters and eliminating them. He also arranged for Cell 101 to send a pirate squadron to attack the boat, provoking them into sending the distress signal and consequently alerting the Russians to their approach. The Russians send planes to attack the boat, but, contrary to Spears' expectations, Reeves leads his men to fight off both attackers. Spears' cunning, however, pays off, and this is still taken as an act of assault on the Chinese and Russian territories.

The Hunters survive the journey and infiltrate the base, where Spears alerts the local police and military to their presence - he also orders an American squadron to corner them as well, claiming that the Hunters have been disowned by their government. However, once again, the group survive the attack and escape, but not before Reeves discovers that the terrorists who attacked them, and who held the hostages in Afghanistan, were getting resources directly from Washington. However, Reeves still believes that Gregorovitch is behind all this. Spears sends US squads to eliminate the Hunters for crimes against their country, but the Hunters survive the ensuing game of cat and mouse. They track Gregorovitch to the Alps, to a stronghold labelled 'Traitor's Den'. There, they infiltrate the base and Reeves holds Gregorovitch at gunpoint. However, Spears appears behind him and strikes him on the back of the head, knocking him unconscious.

Death
Reeves and his men are captured and Spears confronts him in his cell, explaining that all of this chaos was his handiwork, explaining his motivations and his past - which the player experiences by playing the levels in Act 3 of the game - and that, though Spears had a startling amount of admiration for Reeves' bravery and loyalty, those were the very reasons that he hated him, seeing him as foolish and deluded. Reeves was led to a firing squad, but not before he managed to personally trigger a call for aid. He and the Hunters were set up for execution, with Spears watching from a battlement, but with moments to spare a chopper soared overhead and gunned down the firing squad. Reeves took cover, and Reeves freed his friends with a combat knife, taking part in the ensuing battle between the US reinforcements and the Nemesis troops.

Spears ordered for his private plane to be prepped for an evacuation. He calmly gathered his equipment and made his way to the plane with Gregorovitch. Reeves chased after them and executed Gregorovitch with a bullet to the back. Spears dodged the bullets and boarded the plane, but Reeves leapt after him, climbing through one of the windows broken by the gunfire. Once he was inside, he tried to shoot the Spears, but Spears dodged and the bullets struck the pilot instead. Quickly putting the plane on autopilot, Spears attacked him.

The two men engaged in a brutal fist fight through the plane, with Reeves' combat knife changing hands several times. Spears gained the upper hand and repeatedly kicked Reeves to the ground, retrieving a parachute, planning to escape the plane crash and disappear. However, just as Spears was about to launch the parachute, Reeves threw his knife, striking the man in the shoulder. Disoriented, he deployed his parachute into the engine of the plane, which sucked Spears in with it and ripped him into millions of bloody pieces, killing him and ending his treacherous plans.

Personality and traits
Robb Spears claimed that, as a young man, he was a very dedicated and courageous man who was tremendously eager to fight for his country. He remarked to be somehow mentally unstable, but this only maddened him into trying even harder to join the army. When he was a soldier, he was a devoted and loyal man, but was disillusioned when it cost him his men and his own family. After this, he became a corrupt, manipulative and insane traitor who was obsessed with the idea that the American government didn't care about the men who died fighting their battles for them.