BIOGRAPHY

“Acceptable casualties? Nah.”

A tumultuous childhood in the Açores archipelago where earthquakes and underwater eruptions often shook communities taught Nunes the value of mutual aid. He applied this lesson in all things, even as an amateur athlete in biking and kayaking where he often backtracked, at the cost of his own performance, to help his peers facing difficulties or injuries.

On boating trips with his father, Nunes found a connection to the ocean that would set a course for his career. He insisted on helping with the ship’s navigation and repairs, and discovered his sense of freedom through wakeboarding; a desire to be unmoored that could only be satisfied by leaving his home. His path forward was clear, and he went to the mainland to pursue a career in the marines.

While Nunes excelled at learning new skills and easily matched his peers in physical testing, he was highly regarded for his natural leadership and his insistence on civilian safety. After he transitioned and amassed enough experience, he entered selection training to join the DAE.

His humanitarian outlook was an asset as he often worked within civilian areas, sometimes returning to his archipelago home. The frost grenade Nunes created to halt the detonation of explosives caused a lot of buzz, leading Specialist Gustave “Doc” Kateb to recruit him into Rainbow.

PSYCHOLOGICAL REPORT

Volatile elements (explosives, disease, radicals…) are one of the biggest risk factors of our line of work. I know what it’s like to lose a friend to something I couldn’t control. You can’t wish for a different outcome. No prayer will stop the march of death. It’s people like Specialist Isaac “Tubarão” Nunes Oliveira who make the difference, by finding new ways to take control and make sure everyone gets to go home.

Reading performance reports on his time in the DAE, I was fascinated by his repeated insistence that resources always be put aside to contain hostile activity and ensure residential areas and civilians, VIP or not, were duly considered in the overall cost of a mission.

In one operation, a group of smugglers Nunes was chasing retaliated by seizing a small town marina and threatening to blow it up. The situation was at a stalemate until he deployed his invention, which caused the bomb to malfunction and gave his team the opening they needed to neutralize the hostiles. Nunes knows when to be patient and when to act. Risk measurement is crucial, and a lesser specialist would not have been able to resolve this crisis with no casualties and minimal property damage.

Nunes shares a lot of experience and interests with Specialist Craig “Blackbeard” Jenson, who he trained with years ago in one of their units’ many joint exercises. I’ve never heard two grown men laugh so much. I guess you could say similar people are led to similar careers. When I asked Jenson for his opinion on Nunes’ recruitment, his answer surprised me: “Every man’s different. Tubs is trans, so he had to fight twice as hard for his spot. You can’t break him. You just have to let him do his thing.”

Nunes’ resilience is essential, but what I find most important is that no matter the situation, he has as much faith in his empathy as in the skills that make him a high-performing specialist. That’s what makes him Wolfguard.

-- Captain Gustave “Doc” Kateb, Wolfguard Squad Leader