Robert Donaldson

Robert Jones Donaldson, more often referred to as simply Donaldson, is the commander of the NSA's rogue Zero Section and was chosen as the new head of the MERCURY Project after the death of Lt. Colonel Nicholas Kudrow. Donaldson began operations against Simon Lynch of Chicago - the object of Kudrow's June 1998 manhunt and cause of his demise at the hands of Lynch's protector and guardian Art Jeffries - on February 7, 1999 when he ordered a strike team to apprehend Lynch at his foster parents' home at 2552 J Street in what is now referred to as the J Street Incident. Over the next several months, Donaldson ordered countless attempts to capture and kill Simon, most of which completely failed, though the boy's first abduction by John Burrell and Andrew Ridd on March 4 was of moderate success until he escaped and forced the plane's landing in conjunction with a flight of F-16s from Scott Air Force Base. As well, his orders to Ridd and Will Patterson (both of whom were present at the March abduction) to bomb the Lake Michigan Overpass and kill Scott and Katharine Smith was also considered their first true success against Simon and his FBI protectors. On March 30, Donaldson, Striker, Burrell, and Ridd briefly occupied a room at the South Burley Avenue Apartments, to observe the results of Angelo Breem's efforts against Jeffries and Simon, though they left before Jeffries entered the room they had occupied - a room full of smoke from a grenade, meant to camouflage their escape. Most recently, as of June 28, Donaldson personally led Striker, Ridd, and Patterson to Chicago's DuPage Airport aboard a C-130 transport borrowed from a surplus depot in Virginia, in order to successfully abduct and hold Simon for a second time. They succeeded, and by 6:00 EDT that evening, the plane was already over western North Carolina's Smoky Mountains, though by then Simon had escaped yet again, parachuting into the thick Appalachian forest below after 'playing dead'. As a veteran of both the Vietnam and Persian Gulf Wars, Donaldson currently holds the rank of Colonel. He was commander of an Army unit stationed in Kuwait City after the liberation in the early '90s and served in Vietnam from 1971 until the fall of Saigon in 1975.