Rainbow Six

Rainbow Six is a techno-thriller novel written by Tom Clancy and was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on August 3rd, 1998. It focuses on John Clark, Domingo Chavez, and a fictional multi-national counterterrorist unit codenamed Rainbow, rather than Jack Ryan and national politics. The plot of the novel serves as the basis for the plot of the Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six video game.

Overview[]

Several NATO countries have collectively organized an elite counterterrorist unit, composed of the best soldiers from the militaries of several nations, named Rainbow. Based in Hereford, England (real-life home of 22 SAS, the UK special forces unit), the team is led by John Clark (who had the idea for Rainbow), a recurring character in Clancy's novels. Rainbow is "blacker than black," its American funding directed through the Department of the Interior by Congress, 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.

Plot[]

In a prelude to the story, John Clark, Domingo Chavez, and Alistair Stanley (a former SAS operative and second-in-command of Rainbow after Clark) are on a plane bound for England. They foil an attempted hijacking of the plane by rather amateurish Basque terrorists; a take-down made easier by their government licenses to carry concealed weapons on an international flight. Immediately after landing at the nearest airport with the captured hijackers, the three leave the plane to take another flight before the media arrive, to avoid compromising the secrecy vital to Rainbow's future effectiveness.

Upon arriving at Hereford Base, Clark and Chavez are introduced to their new team. Both are still technically under the employment of the CIA, but they have been given simulated military ranks appropriate to their positions within Rainbow. Clark has assumed the rank of at least Brigadier (1-star) General as Rainbow Six, and Chavez, as Team Two leader, assumes the rank of Major. Neither man had been an officer during their respective military careers, so it is with a sense of irony that they accept their new rank and position. While Clark is not exactly thrilled at the idea of being a "suit," Chavez becomes quickly acclimated to the meticulous physical, tactical and weapons training that Rainbow field personnel go through. The result is a highly effective and cohesive pair of squad-sized operational units, supplemented by in-house intelligence and technological experts.

Not long after the establishment of Rainbow, a bank in Bern, Switzerland becomes the site of a hostage situation, eventually determined to be led by wanted terrorist Ernst Model. In an early and desperate show of resolve, the terrorists kill one of the hostages, leading to the Swiss government's request for help from Rainbow. Chavez's Team-2 is deployed to the scene, and disguised as Swiss "Polizei", is able to successfully breach the bank and kill the terrorists with no further loss of hostage lives.

Within several weeks, Chavez's team is again deployed, this time to Austria, where a group led by known German terrorists, Hans Fürchtner and Petra Dortmund have taken over the home of a wealthy Austrian businessman. Their mission is to kidnap the businessman, Erwin Ostermann, in order to obtain the special access codes to the international trading markets. The codes, they believe, are the secret to Herr Ostermann's success and affluence and that of his wealthy capitalist peers (however, they are unaware that there are in fact no such codes). Through careful planning and negotiating, the terrorists are persuaded to take their hostages out to a waiting helicopter, presumably to make their getaway. As the terrorists leave the house and make their way to the helicopter, Rainbow's shooters ambush and kill the terrorists. Again, the team was disguised to hide the true nature of Rainbow.

A third incident materializes rather soon after. Terrorists take over Spain's World Park, a fictional Disneyland-type theme park, taking thirty-five children hostage. They demand the release of Carlos The Jackal along with a list of other political prisoners. Due to the size and scope of the operation, Rainbow deploys both teams in response. During the stand-off, the terrorists execute a hostage—a terminally ill Dutch girl. Rainbow cannot prevent the execution because their immediate action would have further risked the lives of the other children. The Rainbow team manages to eliminate all of the terrorists without further loss of innocent life. The team extracts a little revenge on the terrorist who had killed the sick girl when Homer Johnston "slapped the trigger a bit hard" and the shot struck the terrorist six inches below the sternum. While killing the terrorist, the shot did so slowly and painfully. The sniper is later warned about the intentional 'miss', but no further action is taken.

By this time, Clark and the rest of the intelligence community become suspicious for several reasons: First, the surprising pace of terrorist activities; and secondly, the terrorists involved in each incident were primarily older, inactive terrorists who had not been seen in years. Thirdly, Clark's name and that of Rainbow is being brought up by people who should not be in the know. He had spent almost all of his professional life in the shadows and is very uncomfortable with the idea that he is becoming high profile.

The cause of the sudden outbreak of terrorism is radical eco-terrorists, who are owners and employees of Horizon Corporation, a large and successful biotechnology firm. Under the direction of The Project, they engineer a modified version of the Ebola virus, nicknamed "Shiva"; they also engineer two vaccines: a phony "A" vaccine to covertly spread the Shiva virus; and an effective "B" vaccine to protect themselves. Horizon's CEO, John Brightling, hired an ex-KGB officer, Dimitriy Popov, to foment the terrorist incidents, which Rainbow has so adroitly handled. This would increase awareness of terrorism and allow their people to get a security contract for the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.

Their plan is to place the Shiva virus in the air conditioning system at the stadium, spreading the virus across the world when the infected attendees and athletes, representing every country in the world, return home. Horizon would distribute further quantities of the virus, disguised as a vaccine, to every country in the world, killing everyone but the selected few. After living in sealed redoubts at the OLYMPUS facility in Kansas and Project Alternate in the Amazon and protected by the secret "B" vaccine, they will come out to rebuild the world in an environmentally friendly way.

Popov contracts a splinter cell of the PIRA to ambush Rainbow on their home territory at Hereford, to remove them from the equation as a possible threat to Horizon's impending Australian attack. The PIRA takes several hostages in a hospital — including Patsy Clark Chavez (Ding's pregnant wife), M.D., and Sandy Clark, R.N. — and ambushes Team One, wounding and killing some of the team members. Rainbow responds by jamming the terrorist's communications and deploying Team Two to clear the hospital of the remaining gunmen. The PIRA attack is successful in crippling Rainbow Team One, leaving the way open for the deployment of the Shiva virus at the Sydney Olympics, but Rainbow manages to capture some of the terrorists alive, including the leader, Sean Grady, who is hurried off to a military hospital with gunshot wounds. They use his disorientation while he is coming to from anesthesia after the surgery, to obtain information about Popov's involvement in instigating the attack, as well as the number of a bank account that holds the six million dollars that were supposed to be the payment for PIRA's services, along with a large quantity of medical-pure cocaine.

Popov, who had been watching the event from afar, manages to call the bank and transfer the funds to his own account, before catching a plane back to the US. After debarking, he carelessly throws his passport (representing a "burned" identity) in the garbage, which is later retrieved by a waste disposal worker, and ultimately finds its way to the FBI, who start an operation to find the Russian, after being informed by Clark of his involvement in international terrorism and drug trafficking.

Bill Henriksen, a close associate of Brightling, and ex-FBI agent finds out through his contacts about the FBI's effort to find Popov. Fearing that Popov's capture by the authorities might interfere with the Project, the name Horizon uses to refer to the planned mass genocide, Hendriksen sends Popov off to the eco-terrorists' OLYMPUS facility in Kansas. He can't have him killed, as the ex-KGB officer might have left written instructions that, in the event of his death, might incriminate Brightling and himself before the Project can be set in motion.

By that time Popov already has some idea of his employer's motivations for inciting and financing the terrorist operations but is still unaware of the Project's ultimate goal, as he's been mostly operating on a "need-to-know" basis. Foster Hunnicutt, a survivalist in the movement, informs him of Horizon's genocidal plans. Popov, shocked at what he has unknowingly assisted, has a crisis of conscience and kills Foster, then flees to New York, and contacts John Clark directly. Fortunately, Ding Chavez and a few members of Rainbow are at the Sydney Olympics as security consultants and manage to stop the person who was to infect the stadium's cooling system.

Having failed to destroy civilization with their plague, the eco-terrorists retreat to their secondary refuge in the Brazilian rainforest, Project Alternate, hoping to negotiate a deal to return to the U.S. in a few years. Clark knows they may never even be put on trial as the destruction of the evidence is easily done - only computer records and virus samples to destroy. Clark decides to pursue them to their rainforest refuge with Rainbow under his direct leadership.

Rainbow destroys the terrorists' numerically superior but much less competent militia force, blows up the facility and communications equipment. Clark orders the survivors to remove all of their clothes and walk into the forest without any of civilization's aids, then leaves them behind, telling them that if they want to commune with nature so much, they should go commune. As Chavez wryly points out, even he himself - with all his equipment and training (Ranger School, among others) - would have a tough time surviving in such an environment.

As an epilogue, the Horizon Corporation suffered a major blow with the mysterious disappearance of its chairman but was rebounding with a new drug to combat heart attacks. Popov is living on a ranch in Montana, which he bought from the late Foster's estate. Just before Popov killed Foster, he told Popov that he'd discovered gold on his Montana property but it hadn't meant anything to him in view of the future he was embarking on. Satellite overheads show the Brazil complex to be overtaken by jungle, which doesn't distinguish between friends and enemies.

Principal Characters[]

Team Rainbow[]

John Clark: Commander of Rainbow (known as Rainbow Six)
Alistair Stanley: Deputy commander (Rainbow Five)
Bill Tawney: Head of the intelligence section and former MI6 intelligence analyst
Paul Bellow: In-house psychologist specializing in criminal psychology
Tim Noonan: Resident tactical electronics and surveillance specialist, also working as special agent for Federal Bureau of Investigation
Daniel "Bear" Malloy: Lieutenant colonel for the U.S. Marines and pilot of the MH-60K Night Hawk helicopter used for Rainbow missions

Team 1[]

Peter Covington: Commander and member of the SAS
Miguel "Mike" Chin: Former U.S. Navy SEAL as Master Chief Machinist's Mate
Mortimer "Sam" Houston: Sniper-observer
Fred Franklin: Rifle 1-2, Sergeant 1st Class, Former Instructor Army's Marksmanship - Fort Benning

Team 2[]

Domingo "Ding" Chavez: Commander, leader of team, CIA, Special Activities Division, and Clark's son-in-law
Julio "Oso" Vega: Machine gunner and former Delta Force member
Eddie Price: Senior member and former SAS sergeant major
Louis Loiselle: Former French paratrooper who had been detailed to DGSE
Dieter Weber: Sniper, former German GSG 9 Feldwebel, a factual error, the German Bundesgrenzschutz didn't use military ranks after 1975)
Homer Johnston: Sniper, former Special Forces and Delta Force member

Horizon Corporation[]

John Brightling: Chairman of Horizon Corporation and mastermind of "the Project"
Bill Henriksen: Consultant and head of Global Security, former FBI agent with the Hostage Rescue Team
Carol Brightling: Science Advisor to the President and former wife of John Brightling. Their divorce is a ruse used to safeguard her position, which enables her to pass secrets to Horizon.
John Killgore: Senior research scientist in the testing project of the Shiva virus
Kirk Maclean: Tasked with kidnapping alcoholic homeless women in New York City to be used as test subjects for Shiva testing

Other characters[]

Dmitriy Popov: Former KGB operations officer working for Brightling
Sandra "Sandy" Clark: John Clark's wife
Patricia "Patsy" Clark-Chavez: John Clark's daughter and Domingo Chavez's pregnant wife
Ernst Model: Former Red Army Faction member who leads the botched bank robbery in Bern, Switzerland
Hans Fürchtner: Recruited by Popov to take over the schloss of a wealthy Austrian businessman
Petra Dortmund: Fürchtner's longtime partner
Erwin Ostermann: Austrian financier taken hostage by Fürchtner and Dortmund in his home
Andre Herr: Former Action Directe member in charge of the hostage situation at Worldpark, an amusement park in Spain
Sean Grady: Provisional Irish Republican Army cell commander who leads the attack on the Hereford hospital
Tom Sullivan: FBI agent based in New York investigating Bannister's disappearance
Frank Chatham: FBI agent and Sullivan's partner
Ed Foley: Director of Central Intelligence
Mary Bannister: One of the test subjects in the Shiva transmission study run by Dr. Killgore

Trivia[]

The idea for the title comes from the United States color-coded war plans, specifically the Rainbow plans of the 1930s, where Rainbow Five is the last known plan. In these plans, various countries were given a color code, and the Rainbow Plans outlined strategies for dealing with potential conflicts between coalitions of countries. Rainbow Five, for instance, which is discussed extensively in the Plan Dog memo, details several U.S. strategies for America's involvement in World War II. For Rainbow Six, the aggressor is international terrorists. "Rainbow Six" also refers to John Clark, the leader of Rainbow, because 'Six' is often a designation for a leader or director. Additionally, the title symbolizes the multi-national nature of the elite unit. While a rainbow contains many colors, the unit contains many nationalities.