Jacob Hendricks

"It's Jacob's job to be pissed. It's our job to keep Jacob from getting pissed."

- Dylan Stone

Jacob Hendricks is the deuteragonist, later tertiary antagonist of Call of Duty: Black Ops III and a major character in the Call of Duty: Black Ops III prequel comic. He served as the leader of the Winslow Accord Black Ops team Phi until 2064, when he and John Taylor took part in a daring mission to eliminate four defectors responsible for leaking classified information to the Common Defense Pact and its allies. After the mission, Hendricks requested transfer to a hostage rescue unit, where he met the Player.

Early Career
Jacob Hendricks was born on April 14th, 2027 in Clarksburg, West Virginia. He graduated high school valedictorian in 2045. In 2049, he graduated from West Point Military Academy LT2. He was later recruited to US Army 1st Special Forces Group which is headquartered out of the Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington.

In 2056, Hendricks was promoted to Major and was assigned Company Commander to his Special Forces Operation Detachment-B. He was later seconded to the Winslow Accord Special Forces, and was assigned command of newly-formed wetworks team Phi. Under his command were John Taylor, Dylan Stone, Javier Ramirez, Alice Conrad, Joseph Fierro, Hussein Patel, and Eamon Xu.

Team Phi
"When I told you to go out and pick up some hardware, I said do it quietly!"

- Hendricks

From 2058 to 2064, Hendricks lead numerous successful wetwork operations around the world, including the assassinations of Timur Abulayev in Tashkent and Maxim Chernakov in Helsinki. Hendricks was notorious among his colleagues for being ill-tempered and extremely strict, but his leadership skills proved effective. Despite his temperament, Hendricks was very protective over the soldiers under his command.

Team Phi's missions lead them on a global hunt for the mysterious and elusive Mokrie Baba, also known as the "Wet Witch of Lubyanka". Eventually, they assassinated her in 2059, but several of Phi's members were killed during the operations, including Patel, Xu, and Haruko Mandelbaum. Hendricks continued to operate with Taylor, Stone, Ramirez, Conrad, and Fierro under his command for the next five years.

Manhunt for Dylan Stone
In 2064, Hendricks and Taylor were sent by the CIA into the vast quarantine zone of Singapore to investigate the mysterious shutdown of a local CIA black station. After fighting heavy 54 Immortals forces in the area, the two regrouped with their new handler, Rachel Kane, before finding the black station abandoned and its staff slaughtered in cold blood. Crucially, the station's data drives - which contained vital intel regarding CIA operations around the world - had been stolen.

According to Kane, the last people to check in at the station were Dylan Stone, Javier Ramirez, Alice Conrad, and Joseph Fierro - Hendricks' and Taylor's teammates who had also been operating in the area earlier. Kane theorized that Stone's team could be behind the black station killings, but Hendricks denied it, blaming the 54 Immortals.

Shortly thereafter, some of the intel from the stolen drives was leaked to the 54 Immortals. In order to retrieve the data, Hendricks and Taylor posed as arms dealers and infiltrated the 54i's base of operations. They were compromised by the 54i's leaders, Goh Min and Goh Xiulan, and in the ensuing firefight, Goh Min was inadvertently gunned down. Hendricks and Taylor managed to retrieve the stolen data, but not before Taylor cut off Goh Xiulan's right hand in order to bypass a fingerprint authentication system.

The data from the stolen drives contained security footage that proved Stone's team was responsible for the black station murders. Hendricks, still in denial, theorized that the footage was faked and somebody was framing Stone. In order to determine Stone's motives, Hendricks and Taylor were sent to the site of Stone's last operation before he reported to the black station - Stone's team had investigated a priority alert signal originating from underneath the abandoned Coalescence facility at the heart of the quarantine zone.

Arriving at the site, Hendricks and Taylor fought through 54i forces, who had been contracted by the CDP to investigate the area. It soon became apparent why: miles underneath the facility lay a long-abandoned CIA black project, SP/CORVUS. The project, which seemed to make use of involuntary human test subjects, had accidentally been discovered by Stone's team when they responded to the alert signal. There was also evidence that this project had somehow caused the Singapore disaster that killed 300,000 people. Proceeding deeper into the facility, Hendricks and Taylor found Javier Ramirez in a server room, in the process of leaking more classified intelligence. After questioning him about Stone's motives, the two learned that Stone was using the information from the stolen drives to barter their way out of Singapore, and were headed to Egypt to find Yousef Salim - a psychotherapist involved in SP/CORVUS. Ramirez was then eliminated before the entire facility was flooded by the 54i in a desperate attempt to kill Hendricks and Taylor, destroying the evidence for the black project in the process.

The information Ramirez leaked allowed the 54i to target the CIA's local safehouse in Singapore, where Kane was situated. Although Hendricks was adamant that Stone be stopped, Taylor insisted on rescuing Kane. Moving outside the quarantine zone, Hendricks and Taylor found that the 54i was ravaging their way to the safehouse, killing civilians and destroying cities. Despite Hendricks' numerous objections to the mission, Taylor managed to rescue Kane and kill Goh Xiulan.

Arriving in Egypt, Hendricks, Taylor and Kane met up with Egyptian Army Lieutenant Zeyad Khalil, who had placed Dr. Salim in custody at Ramses Station in return for support against the invading Nile River Coalition. After Hendricks briefly interrogated Salim, the station came under sudden attack from the NRC, forcing Hendricks and Taylor to abandon Salim and focus on holding back the enemy forces. Whilst they were fighting, Salim was kidnapped by Stone, who had used the NRC assault as a distraction to slip into Ramses Station unnoticed.

Taylor revealed to Hendricks that all was not lost; he had planted a tracking device on Salim beforehand, so they could still track his (and therefore Stone's) location. Hendricks, angered that Taylor had acted without his permission, punched Taylor in the face and expressed his reservations about the entire mission.

Following the tracker, Hendricks and Taylor were led to the ruined city of Kebechet, where they captured Alice Conrad. They were too late for Salim; Stone and Fierro had executed him and escaped. Taylor took it upon himself to interrogate Conrad, who revealed Stone's whereabouts and motives - he intended to track down and capture Sebastian Krueger, director of the SP/CORVUS project, and hold him publicly accountable for his crimes. After learning this information, Taylor executed Conrad, much to Hendricks' dismay.

Conrad's information led Hendricks and Taylor to the sub-Cairo aquifers, where Stone and Fierro were under projection from the NRC. With the help of the Egyptian Army, the NRC forces on the aquifers were wiped out and Fierro was trapped. Stone, however, managed to escape with the help of the NRC. Despite Hendricks' promises of securing Fierro alive, Taylor killed him, triggering another argument between the two. Hendricks accused Taylor of being romantically interested in Kane, affecting his judgement, and expressed sympathies with Stone. In response, Taylor punched Hendricks, declaring him unfit for the mission. The fight was broken up by the sudden collapse of the aquifer, forcing the two to hastily escape. Afterwards, Hendricks filed a report on Taylor, heavily criticizing his unprofessional relationship with Kane.

The Egyptian Army eventually tracked Stone's location to the Lotus Towers, the NRC's last stronghold in Cairo. With Lt. Khalil's help, Hendricks and Taylor inspired a civilian uprising, which distracted the NRC forces whilst the two chased down Stone to the roof of the towers. Taylor attempted to eliminate Stone, only to be inflicted with crippling injuries; Hendricks overcame his ethical issues with the mission to save Taylor's life by shooting Stone dead at the last second.

Aftermath
With all of the defectors dead, the leaks were stopped and the secret of SP/CORVUS was secure; without Stone's evidence, the CDP's claims of the CIA's involvement in the Singapore disaster were dismissed as mere propaganda.

The mission left Hendricks and Taylor as the only surviving members of team Phi, which was immediately disbanded. The stress of the mission caused Hendricks to resign from wetworks operations and request a transfer to a lower-risk hostage rescue unit. Taylor, on the other hand, was accepted into Project Prometheus and received cybernetic augmentations to heal his injuries, becoming the commander of the so-called "Cyber Soldier" unit. The two would not see each other again until they collaborated on a hostage rescue mission in 2065.

Ethiopia
"New blood? Gonna take care of them as good as you did me?"

- Taylor, to Hendricks

On October 27, 2065, Hendricks, along with the Player, took part in a joint operation with Taylor's Cyber Ops team to rescue the Egyptian Minister Said from an NRC base in the Semien Mountains of Ethiopia. Disguising as air traffic control operators, Hendricks and the Player caused a distraction by shooting down an NRC aircraft with the local D.E.A.D. system. Upon locating the Minister, they rescued him from interrogation, but he insisted that they also extract Lt. Khalil, who had been captured during the civilian uprising at Lotus Towers a year earlier. Hendricks reluctantly agreed.

Fighting their way through the NRC forces, Hendricks and the Player rendezvoused with Taylor. Now a Cyber Soldier, Hendricks witnessed Taylor's new capabilities first-hand, but quipped that he had lost his humanity through the augmentations. After their primary extraction plan went wrong, Hendricks and the Player moved to secondary extraction to secure Minister Said and Lt. Khalil, whilst Taylor's team rescued the rest of the prisoners on Hendricks' demand.

After holding off masses of NRC forces, a VTOL finally arrived and extracted Hendricks, Said, and Khalil, but unfortunately the Player was left behind and torn apart by a GI Unit. Losing both their arms and breaking their legs, they were rescued at the last second by Taylor.

DNI Infection
"You still in there, John? Do you hear me?"

- Hendricks, to an infected Taylor

Upon rescuing the Player, Taylor recommended them for Project Prometheus and they were taken to a hospital in Zürich to receive the necessary cybernetic augmentations. The Player was implanted with a DNI, but died during the limb replacement procedure due to a life support failure. In the Dream sequence state, the Player survived the operation and caused Corvus to be reborn in their DNI. Taylor interfaced with the Player's DNI during a medical procedure at the Coalescence Corporation's medical center, which caused their consciousness to somehow transfer into Taylor's DNI - but the interface also allowed Corvus to transfer itself into Taylor's mind, "infecting" him.

Scouring Taylor's mind, Corvus found his memories of the manhunt for Dylan Stone. It saw an opportunity to delve into these memories to learn more about its own inception - the discovery of SP/CORVUS. All the while, Corvus was able to spread into other hosts: Diaz, Hall, and Maretti, after they "synced up" with Taylor through their DNIs.

Taking control of their minds, Corvus created a physical immersion of Taylor's memories to explore through Taylor's team. It had them discover the black project at the Coalescence facility in Singapore, and then try and track down the surviving members for more answers - mirroring Stone's actions in real life. Meanwhile, the Player, also present in this immersion (although unaware that it was one), attempted to stop the Corvus-controlled Taylor, whilst being accompanied by a simulated Hendricks built from Taylor's memories.

Defection
"You never stopped, did you? All the death, all the failure - you just moved the whole damn project here! The same set up. The same human experiments. The same risks... and you started the whole thing over again!"

- Hendricks to Krueger

Having sympathized with Dylan Stone's beliefs regarding SP/CORVUS, Hendricks, feeling betrayed by the Winslow Accord and the CIA, launched a terrorist attack on the Coalescence Corporation headquarters in Zürich, slaughtering Coalescence staff and capturing Sebastian Krueger at gunpoint. Berating him for continuing the unethical DNI experiments despite their incredibly costly failures, Hendricks was interrupted by the Player, now physically controlling Taylor's body. In a moment of panic, Hendricks shot Krueger, and was then shot and killed himself by the Player.

The Frozen Forest
"The Frozen Forest. It's real... and it's what comes next."

- "Hendricks"

Following Hendricks' death, Corvus used a fake Hendricks in an attempt to coerce the Player into staying the Frozen Forest forever. The Player refused, seeing through Corvus' tricks, and proceeding to destroy the Frozen Forest and wipe Taylor's DNI, thus eradicating any memory of Hendricks left.

Personality
Hendricks was notorious among his colleagues for possessing a fiery temper, which was evident during operations in Tashkent and Helsinki, and especially so during the hunt for Dylan Stone. Although Hendricks was formerly dedicated to the Winslow Accord and its allies, he put his comrades above anything else, which proved to be a moral issue for him when he was tasked with hunting them down. Upon the discovery of SP/CORVUS, Hendricks also questioned the ethics of the Winslow Accord's operations, something that Taylor seemed reluctant to consider.

Quotes
"My name is Jacob Hendricks. I'm your new C.O."

- Hendricks' first words to the Player.

"You know me - I just go with the flow"

- Hendricks to the Player.

"Watch your step in there. This bucket is hanging by a thread."

- "Hendricks" in "Rise & Fall".

"John! John don't go! What is a frozen forest?"

- Hendricks to Taylor in "Lotus Towers".

"I can't do this anymore. You're going down a path that I can't follow. This is as far as I go..."

- "Hendricks" final words to the Player.

"I got this! Take a walk!"

- "Hendricks" to the Player while interrogating Dr. Salim

"I don't think you know! This is someone I know, someone I fought alongside... he shouldn't go out like this..."

- To Kane about interfacing with Diaz

Trivia

 * Hendricks' favorite weapon is the KN-44 through the campaign.