Answer: 
He is a Professional. 

Evidence:
I actually found it quite difficult to come up with many specifics apart from the same example you used for Sam from Hostage (having his phone with him even off duty and responding immediately to the call).

His widely varied training has given him many areas of expertise (some surprising) apart from the obvious combat/survival/flying ones. He is the one in Samurai Wind who responds to Malone's question about the strings of numbers Dane transmits, saying they could be bank codes. He recognises the symptoms of radiation poisoning in First Strike. He is sure from the replay of the radar screen that the plane carrying Dr.Woods in Skorpion has been destroyed by a bomb rather than any other kind of on-board explosion. And hs has a good visual memory (in Skorpion he spots and remembers the phone number on the Arlo Cinq).

Comment:
In common with Sam, he has a good knowledge for current affairs as relating to their business. Although in Orbit he doesn't immediately recognise the name of Shabhadi's yacht (and remember, Sam had the professors note book for some time before he mentioned it to Chris and Backup, and had therefore had time to think about why the name was familiar) he did know who Shabhadi was and could fill Backup in. And in Souvenir he and Sam both knew Markov's background - though again Backup didn't. It was Backup who surprised me every time with her lack of knowledge about things - she didn't even know that 1 million dollars was the going rate for an international hit in Phoenix! Yet she was supposed to be the clever one with the brilliant memory. Weird....  

jw 8. März 2000