Colonel Thomas Kinnear runs the Sector Seven High Arctic Base, which houses the Ice Man and is the launch site for the top secret Ghost 1 spacecraft. He's a soldier first and a Sector Seven administrator second but he isn't above questioning orders when he thinks they're wrong, a brave thing to do when your boss is Walter Simmons. Still, he feels life working for Sector Seven is making him paranoid, and he plans to retire to the Virgin Islands once the Ice Man has been moved to another location in the US.
Though he knows the name and background of every person working in the base, one of the few men he fully respects is Lieutenant Colonel Philip Nolan, with whom he's served together for much of his career.
History[]
Ghosts of Yesterday[]
During Kinnear's time in Vietnam, he experienced all the horrors of war and even lost a good friend, a superior officer who was fatally wounded and had to be left behind. Kinnear himself administered the necessary final shot. During a black ops assassination mission in Saigon, Kinnear and Nolan were shot while trying to withdraw. They managed to reach the US embassy, and ended up in a hospital in the Philippines.
When he was given the chance to head a top secret project, he jumped at the chance, and was placed in charge of the Sector Seven High Arctic Base. There he oversaw construction of Ghost 1, derived from the Ice Man's technology. As the ship neared launch, Kinnear's superiors decided to relocate the Ice Man to Nevada, something he saw as a major mistake. Soon after the launch of the Ghost 1, they lost contact with the ship. Kinnear kept the information from Simmons until his superior called to break the news that Kinnear would be accompanying the Ice Man on the journey south.
As Kinnear prepared to leave with the convoy, a message came in from the Ghost 1 indicating it had gone far beyond its expected course. Kinnear left Nolan in charge of finding a way to get the ship back, and departed on one of the trucks. The weather on the trip was atrocious, and the convoy crashed a short way into its journey. Kinnear's left leg was shattered in the crash, but he refused morphine so he could coordinate recovery efforts as they set up a security zone and tried to keep the Ice Man frozen. The driver who had caused the crash was located, turning out to be a Russian agent named Sergei Tasarov. During attempts to keep the Ice Man frozen, Tasarov's Russian friends found the crash site and attacked. Tasarov got free during the fire fight and attacked Kinnear with a knife. The struggle ended with Tasarov dead and Kinnear mortally wounded.
Though Kinnear was ready to die, the troubles were just starting, as the Ice Man had defrosted enough to become active. Kinnear dragged himself from the tent in time to see Nolan, who'd come looking for them, hit the Ice Man with a truck. The two men quickly worked out a plan, though even Nolan was unaware of the full extent of what Kinnear was about to do. Kinnear shot at the Ice Man with a machine gun he'd found and, when the Ice Man picked him up, he detonated the backpack full of explosives he was wearing. Nolan subsequently used liquid nitrogen to refreeze the Ice Man, though he too died a short time later. Lieutenant Jensen would swear he heard Kinnear say "Mission Accomplished" before he died.