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Rainbow Six is a techno-thriller novel written by Tom Clancy. It focuses on John Clark, Ding Chavez, and a fictional multi-national counter-terrorist squad named Rainbow, rather than Jack Ryan and national politics. The novel was inspired in part by the early stages of the game of the same name, and the game and novel were written largely at the same time. However, the game had to be completed first, therefore the novel features a different ending.
Plot introduction
Several NATO countries have collectively organized an elite counter-terrorist squad, composed of the best soldiers from the militaries of several nations, named Rainbow. Based in Hereford, England (real-life home of the SAS), the team is led by John Clark (who had the idea for Rainbow), a recurring character in the Ryanverse series of Clancy's novels. Rainbow is "blacker than black", its American funding directed through the Department of the Interior by Capitol Hill, then through The Pentagon's Office of Special Projects, with no connection whatsoever to the Intelligence Community. Fewer than a hundred people in Washington, D.C. know that Rainbow exists.
The memo
The following is a transcript of the original memo written by John Clark that led to Rainbow's creation:
- There is good news and there is bad news. With the demise of the Soviet Union and other nation states with political positions adverse to American and Western interests, the likelihood of a major international confrontation is at an all-time low. This, clearly, is the best of good news.
- But along with that we must face the fact that there remain many experienced and trained international terrorists still roaming the world, some with lingering contacts with national intelligence agencies - plus the fact that some nations, while not desirous of a direct confrontation with American or other Western nations, could still make use of the remaining terrorist "free agents" for more narrow political goals.
- If anything, this problem is very likely to grow, since under the previous world situation, the major nation states placed firm limits on terrorist activity-these limits enforced by controlled access to weapons, funding, training, and safehavens.
- It seems likely that the current world situation will invert the previous "understanding" enjoyed by the major countries. The price of support, weapons, training, and safehavens might well become actual terrorist activity, not the ideological purity previously demanded by sponsoring nation states.
- The most obvious solution to this-probably-increasing problem will be a new multinational counterterrorist team.
- I propose the code name Rainbow. I further propose that the organization be based in the United Kingdom. The reasons for this are simple:
- * The UK currently, owns and operates the Special Air Service, the world's foremost-that is, most experienced-special operations agency.
- * London is the world's most accessible city in terms of commercial air travel-in addition to which the SAS has a very cordial relationship with British Airways.
- * The legal environment is particularly advantageous, due to press restrictions possible under British law but not American.
- * The long-standing "special relationship" between American and British governmental agencies.
- For all of these reasons, the proposed special-operations team, composed of US., UK, and selected NATO personnel, with full support from national-intelligence services, coordinated at site...
Plot summary
While on a plane en-route to England, Clark, Chavez, and Alistair Stanley (former SAS operative and second in command of Rainbow after Clark) foil an attempted take-over of the plane by Basque separatists. Immediately after the plane lands, the three have to leave before the media arrive, so as to avoid losing the secrecy with which the operation was set up.
Rainbow is immediately thrown into several counter-terrorist missions in quick succession, though fortunately after several months in which to train and develop as a cohesive unit. Shortly after arriving in England, they are again called upon to combat terrorists. A bank in Bern, Switzerland has been taken over by would-be robbers lead by wanted terrorist Ernst Model. They have taken hostages and already executed one of them. A Rainbow team is deployed to the scene, and after a short standoff, is able to successfully breach the bank and kill the terrorists with no further loss of hostage lives.
Shortly after this incident, Rainbow is again deployed, this time to Austria, where two wanted German terrorists, husband and wife duo Hans Fürchtner and Petra Dortmund, had attempted to kidnap wealthy businessman Erwin Ostermann. While en route to a helicopter to make their getaway, the Rainbow teams are able to ambush and kill them.
In a third incident, in Spain, terrorists take over an amusement park (Port Aventura), take around thirty children hostage, and demand the release of Carlos the Jackal. Rainbow is again deployed. In an attempt to force the terrorists to surrender, John Clark orders the power to be cut. In retaliation, the terrorists execute a hostage — a terminally ill Dutch girl. The Rainbow team manages to eliminate all of the terrorists without further loss of life. The surprising pace of terrorist incidents leads Clark to be suspicious; also, the terrorists involved in each incident are typically older, inactive terrorists not seen in many years. Later, Clark discovers that an ex-KGB agent, Dmitriy Popov, has been investigating Rainbow.
The cause of the sudden outbreak of terrorism is radical eco-terrorists, who are coincidentally owners of a large and successful biotechnology firm. They engineer a modified version of the Ebola virus, codenamed "Shiva"; they also engineer a vaccine for themselves. Their plan is to infect the world, killing everyone but their selected few, who will rebuild the world in a scientifically and environmentally friendly way. They've hired the ex-KGB agent investigating Rainbow, and instructed him to contract the terrorist incidents Rainbow has so adroitly handled, to increase awareness of terrorism in order to get a security contract for the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.
Later, Popov contracts members of the IRA to ambush Rainbow on their home territory, to remove them from the equation of their impending attack. The ambush is successful, crippling Rainbow, leaving the way open for the deployment of Shiva at the Olympics.
As a reward, Popov is taken into the eco-terrorists' project, and when he learns of their plans. Popov has a crisis of conscience and contacts John Clark directly to stop the plan. Fortunately, Ding Chavez and a few other members of Rainbow are onsite at the Sydney Olympics as security consultants, and are in place to stop the person who was going to infect the stadium's cooling system.
Having failed to destroy civilization with their plague, the eco-terrorists retreat to their refuge in the Brazilian rainforest, which they planned to do anyway, hoping to negotiate a deal to return to the U.S. in a few years. Rainbow, under John Clark's leadership, deploys to the rainforest, first killing the terrorists' numerically superior but much less competent militia force, then stripping them naked and blowing up the facility, leaving them without any of humanity's inventions to help them attempt to survive in the jungle of the rainforest; however, their prognosis is bleak, as Chavez wryly points out that even with all his equipment and training, he himself would have a tough time surviving in such an environment.
In the epilogue, the Horizon Corporation is said to have suffered a major blow with the mysterious loss of its chairman, but was rebounding with a new drug to combat heart attacks. Popov is living in an estate in Montana.
Literary significance & criticism
The novel has been criticised by many readers (as evidenced by reader's reviews on Amazon.com) for a number of implausible plot devices indicative of poor research by the author. One major one is that the weather in Sydney in September, when the Olympics were held, is usually very temperate. Therefore, the idea that a water fogging cooling system would be installed, and in use, at the main stadium for the Olympics was viewed as very implausible (although the book does explain that the weather is unseasonably hot because of El Niño). In fact, in the novel, it appears to be summer in both hemispheres simultaneously. Amongst other implausibilities in the portrayal of various foreign countries that the book is set in, the idea that a Spanish theme park would feature a ride on a Stuka dive-bomber is also widely viewed by the reader reviewers as ridiculous (however it is important to note that the terrorists use this fact as reasoning for their attack on Worldpark). As well there is at least one glaring anachronism in the book. When the hijacked airliner at the start of the book lands, the airport is referred to as RCAF Gander. Since the RCAF ceased to exist in 1968 with the amalgamation of the Canadian Armed Forces any base at Gander would be prefaced by CFB (Canadian Forces Base).
Clancy also refers to the Heckler & Koch MP5/10 submachine gun as the Heckler & Koch MP10, a weapon that does not exist, but as an improved MP5.
Clancy represents quantum computing as a quick way to break 128-bit encryption. As of 2001, a year after the setting of the novel, the best known quantum computer had just seven qubits, and the largest number successfully factored this way was 15; even if a group such as the NSA had a quantum computer anywhere near as powerful as 128-bit encryption requires, its existence would be a very closely guarded secret. Further, Clancy treats quantum computing as if it were a programming technique that could be used on a conventional supercomputer; this is not the case.
Regardless of such criticisms, the novel has sold millions of copies around the world.
Release details
- 1998, USA, G P Putnam's Sons ISBN 0399143904, Pub date ? August 1998, hardcover
- 1998, UK, Michael Joseph Ltd ISBN 0718143361, Pub date 27 August 1998, hardback
- 1998, USA, Putnam Pub Group ISBN 0399144137, Pub date ? August 1998, hardcover (Limited Edition)
- 1998, USA, Demco Media ISBN 0606172076, Pub date ? September 1998, unbound
- 1998, USA, Random House ISBN 0375703241, August 1998, paperback (Large Type Edition)
- 1999, USA, Berkley Pub Group ISBN 0425170055, Pub date ? September 1999, paperback
- 1999, USA, Berkley Publishing Group ISBN 0425170349, pub date September 1999, mass market paperback
"Rainbow Six (novel)"