Tunnel Rat

A cocky combat engineer who specializes in demolitions, Nicky Lee, codenamed Tunnel Rat, may look a little slight of frame for a member of an elite military unit like G.I. Joe but his build makes him just the man to call whenever a mission calls for making their way through a tight squeeze!

Fiction

Prior to joining G.I. Joe, Tunnel Rat had become something of an expert on pre-Colombian architecture, having researched and explored several such structures. G.I. Joe vol. 1 #13 During his pre-Joe military career, he discovered the hidden bunker of the dictator President Al-Alawi. Homefront, Part 1

Tunnel Rat was Mainframe's roommate at The Pit. As Mainframe became obsessed with the mystery surrounding Cobra, Tunnel Rat was forced to endure many a sleepless night listening to him yammer on and on about the various conspiracies he was digging up. Origins #7

When The Pit was infiltrated by spider drones, Tunnel Rat was recruited by Brainstorm to sneak through the base's air ducts along with Scarlett to try and stop the drone from reaching the surface. Guided through the system by Dusty, Tunnel Rat narrowly saved Scarlett from falling into a fan. As they continued through, they finally found the robot, which shot Tunnel Rat in the arm before Scarlett pulled him back inside while the drone made a break for it. Wrapping up his wound, he gave Scarlett his gun and told her to forge on ahead without him. G.I. Joe vol. 1 #4

After Scarlett broke out of custody and made a break for The Pit's service tunnels, Clutch went to retrieve Tunnel Rat from his room to go in after her. Tunnel Rat refused, feeling he owed her one for the last time they were in the tunnels together, but Hawk suddenly arriving to chew him out got him to change his tune. After a camera drone spotted Scarlett, Tunnel Rat headed towards her last known location. The Betrayers Part 5 Reaching the end of the flooded overflow tunnel at the bottom of the base, Tunnel Rat found no sign of the rogue Joe until he climbed up a nearby ladder and found her holstered gun hung from a pipe under a scrawled message claiming it was a "peace offering". Though he realized it was a distraction, he still let her go as a show of gratitude towards her.

Later, when the rogue Mainframe returned to The Pit and took his old bunk back, Tunnel Rat commented that he didn't miss his roommate one bit. The Betrayers Part 6

With his expertise in pre-Colombian architecture, Tunnel Rat was recruited to help guide Beachhead and Tripwire through an Olmec temple over radio from The Pit. G.I. Joe vol. 1 #13

Tunnel Rat attended Bazooka's memorial service after he was killed out in the field. G.I. Joe vol. 1 #15

Tunnel Rat was one of the many Joes participating in the mission to Verde to observe drug lord Pablito Ortega for probably Cobra activity. M.A.S.S. Destruction, Part 3

After The Pit was destroyed, Tunnel Rat led a team to investigate the wreckage of the Jumpshot the perpetrators used to escape the base before it exploded. The team soon spotted a Mamba helicopter their saboteurs were using to escape, which then fired upon the Joes and blew up their transportation. As the Mamba flew off, Tunnel Rat radioed in a request to get two jet fighters that were in the area to shoot the Mamba down. G.I. Joe vol. 2 #4

Tunnel Rat was part of a team led by Flint to G.I. Joe's Bear Lake facility. He and Roadblock tended to Sneak Peek after he injured by a Viper. After the team managed to take down the Cobra-commandeered R.H.I.N.O., Flint had Tunnel Rat scout ahead and rendezvous with Crankcase's team elsewhere in the base. G.I. Joe vol. 2 #5 As he helped tend to the injured, Tunnel Rat talked with Flint about what they were going to do next after they delivered their wounded to the nearest military base. Ultimately they settled on what they felt would be the last place Cobra would think to look for them: the ruins of Springfield. Mocking the captive Baroness' warnings about the former Cobra testing grounds, Tunnel Rat was sent to find the team a power source they could use while they holed up in the town's bank. After the team came under fire by a B.A.T., Tunnel Rat was shot and wounded by the android and had to be dragged back to safety. G.I. Joe vol. 2 #6 After being carried into the vault by Roadblock, Hard Drive and Beachhead operated on and stabilized him. G.I. Joe vol. 2 #7

When the top secret Joe team went public, Tunnel Rat's expertise in demolitions and combat engineering earned him a place on their public facing unit of "celebrity soldiers". As the team boarded the Skystorm to embark on their first mission, Tunnel Rat was chatted up by their embedded blogger Hashtag. When the team arrived to the Cobra controlled town of Warrenton, Ohio and their transport was shot down, Tunnel Rat landed in the wreckage alongside Roadblock and Quick Kick. Pinned down by W.O.R.M.S., Tunnel Rat calmed Roadblock after he was caught off guard by Shipwreck's drone Polly and explained that the drone had taken a scan of the area. Pointing out an access hatch he could use to get behind their enemies, Tunnel Rat ran for a nearby manhole and emerged from the sewers just in time to take out the drivers of a Maggot as they prepared to kill his allies. With the Cobras taken care of, Tunnel Rat and the others were able to reach the injured Shipwreck, though as Tunnel Rat pointed out they'd need to find the missing Doc so she could take care of him and remove the shrapnel embedded in his body. With an angry mob of townspeople closing on them, Tunnel Rat tried to calm Roadblock and convince him they needed to run for it as he shouted at them. Homefront, Part 1 Covering their escape by tossing a grenade into a gas main, Tunnel Rat and his three allies hid out in the town's junkyard. Now that they had a moment to rest, Tunnel Rat used Polly to scout the town and found that the supposed Cobra chemical plant the Joes had been sent in to take care of didn't exist. Getting back to looking for their three missing female comrades, Tunnel Rat discovered that his connection with Polly seemed to die as the drone got closer to the Warrenton mall, indicating that Cobra was using it as a base. Homefront, Part 2

As night fell, Tunnel Rat finally found Doc unconscious on a rooftop and woke her up by speaking to her through Polly. After leading her, Hashtag, and Cover Girl back to the junkyard, Tunnel Rat questioned the wisdom of them leaving Quick Kick there to help Doc operate on Shipwreck rather than bringing the team's silent weapons expert with them to the mall, a concern Roadblock didn't share. With the Joes making their move on the mall, Tunnel Rat helped Roadblock take out the prison guards before moving to take out Cobra's signal jammer. On the roof Tunnel Rat encountered the Cobra engineer Scrap Iron, who revealed to him that he held a dead man's switch that was linked to the explosives Cobra had placed throughout Warrenton. Homefront, Part 4 Though he at first pretended to cooperate with Scrap Iron's demands and put down his gun, Tunnel Rat only pretended to surrender and used an EMP grenade to take out the switch. Though that was one detonator taken care of, elsewhere the Baroness used hers, causing a gigantic explosion that distracted Tunnel Rat long enough that Scrap Iron was able to make a run for it. Though he got away, the Cobra operative still left behind his missile launcher, which Tunnel Rat used to finally take out the signal jammer. Now that radio communications were back up, Tunnel Rat was able to formulate a plan that the three Joes who stayed behind could use to break out of the burning town; Using Polly's motion sensors, Tunnel Rat marked uninhabited buildings that Shipwreck in a Maggot and Cover Girl in a H.I.S.S. could safely blow up, clearing a path for Shipwreck's people. Homefront, Part 5

Notes

• The appearance of Tunnel Rat's original figure was based on Larry Hama, the writer behind the original 1980s G.I. Joe comic book, as well as several early IDW Joe comics. While more recent artists seem to have downplayed this resemblance, S.L. Gallant's depiction of him in G.I. Joe vol. 1 issues #11 and #12 seems to be directly based on a younger Hama.

External links

• Tunnel Rat at YoJoe.com
• Tunnel Rat at TFWiki.net