Their signature tattoo
Coral Snake was a deep cover special operations unit secretly funded by the National Security Agency based in Fort Benning, Georgia, and led by Colonel Ron Samuels. The Coral Snake commandos had carried out illegal field operations for Director Roger Stanton and his co-conspirators during Day 2.
All Coral Snake members had a distinctive snake tattoo on their right arm.
Before Day 2
Sometime prior to Day 2, Coral Snake leader, Colonel Samuels, evaluated Jack Bauer as a potential member, and attempted to recruit him. Jack refused the offer to join Coral Snake, much to Samuels' disappointment. Samuels confided to his top operator, Jonathan Wallace, that he admired Jack as "a born killer". ("Day 2: 12:00am-1:00am")
Also prior to Day 2, Colonel Samuels and his Coral Snake commandos became an integral part of a conspiracy, headed by Roger Stanton, to smuggle a nuclear bomb into Los Angeles. This plot was orchestrated in order to benefit Stanton and Senator Bruce Gluck, who supported a more aggressive foreign policy than President David Palmer was initially willing to sponsor. Although the bomb was in the hands of the Second Wave terrorist group (Muslim extremists), the Coral Snake commandos were covertly tracking the bomb and were poised to capture it before detonation. The Coral Snake members and Director Stanton did not know that they were being used as pawns in a second plot, the Los Angeles nuclear attack conspiracy, in which the bomb was actually supposed to detonate, in order to profit members of a European oil consortium. Jonathan Wallace, the lead Coral Snake commando, had secretly sold his loyalty to Peter Kingsley, an American who represented this oil consortium.
Day 2
On orders from the conspiracy's leadership, eight Coral Snake commandos fired a surface to air missile at a plane that was carrying CTU agent Jack Bauer, prisoner Nina Myers, and FBI Agents Rick Phillips and Harris back from Visalia. The plane crash landed in a remote area distant from any urban city. The commandos found the wounded Agent Phillips and executed him, and then attempted to kill the only other survivors: Jack and Nina. However, Jack protected his witness, and eventually shot four commandos dead. He held off the remaining four until a TAC team inside a CTU helicopter arrived and killed them as well. Jack spotted their distinctive tattoo on one of the bodies and reported it to President David Palmer.
Several hours later, the remaining seven commandos proceeded as planned, and positioned themselves to ambush the Second Wave terrorists and neutralize the nuclear weapon in Los Angeles at the Norton Airfield. However, their captain, Jonathan Wallace, had been secretly paid off by Peter Kingsley to allow the bomb to detonate. Wallace covertly killed the six remaining commandos, and escaped before being discovered by the agencies raiding the airport. ("Day 2: 8:00pm-9:00pm")
The nuclear bomb that Coral Snake failed to neutralize was later captured and detonated safely by a joint CTU/FBI operation. As Kingsley intended for Wallace to be killed in the blast, he later sent mercenaries after him to tie up the loose end. Roger Stanton was also tortured by David Palmer's staff after being suspected, though he refused to confess, but was later exposed as responsible.
Background information and notes
- The tattoo of Coral Snake is similar to that of the Death Eaters in the Harry Potter universe.