Eliot's role on the team is to protect the individual members, and particularly, to get them out of trouble faster than they get into it. Many of his adversaries underestimate him, as Sterling discovers in The Zanzibar Marketplace Job. Eliot is a skilled fighter with a razor sharp mind and zen-like demeanor. He prefers hand-to-hand combat to guns, for which he has an active dislike, despite his skills as a marksman. This is likely due to the fact that Eliot prefers to disable his opponents rather than kill them. Eliot also has some surprising skills. He is a talented gourmet chef, and claims to grow his own food.