Rainbow Six (novel)
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 First edition cover |
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| Author | Tom Clancy |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Ryanverse |
| Genre(s) | Thriller, Novel |
| Publisher | G P Putnam's Sons |
| Released | August 1998 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 740 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-399-14390-4 (first edition, hardback) & ISBN 0-425-17034-9 (paperback edition) |
| Preceded by | Executive Orders |
| Followed by | The Bear and the Dragon |
Rainbow Six is a techno-thriller novel written by Tom Clancy. It focuses on John Clark, Ding Chavez, and a fictional multi-national counterterrorist unit codenamed 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.
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 the 22nd SAS Regiment), 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 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.
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[edit] Title
"Rainbow Six" refers to John Clark, the leader of Rainbow. In military jargon, "six" refers to the commander.
[edit] 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 U.S., UK, and selected NATO personnel, with full support from national intelligence services, coordinated at site...
[edit] Plot summary
In a prelude to the story, Clark, Ding 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 highjack of the plane by rather amateurish 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.
A rather long section of the book describes the extreme training that Rainbow personnel go through, building a highly effective and cohesive pair of squad-sized operational units. Soon, a bank in Bern, Switzerland is 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 Austrian 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 WorldPark, a fictional amusement park. The terrorists 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. (WorldPark may be a reference to PortAventura, a theme park located in Salou, Catalonia, Spain.)
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 a retired KGB officer, Col. Dmitriy Popov, has been investigating Rainbow, but not soon enough to prevent Popov from having "cased" Rainbow once he figured out who they are.
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, nicknamed "Shiva"; they also engineer a vaccine for themselves. Their plan is to infect the air conditioning system at the Sydney Olympics, spreading the disease across the world when the infected attendees return home. They will then use their firm to distribute further quantities of the disease, disguised as a vaccine, to nearly every person in 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 officer investigating Rainbow, and instructed him to foment 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 PIRA 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, but when he learns of their plans, Popov has a crisis of conscience. He kills a survivalist in the movement named Foster, flees to New York 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. Clark is rather bitter about the fact that these people will likely be able to return to power in a few years because of the utter fairness of the constitution and law, and so decides to take the law into his own hands. Rainbow, under John Clark's leadership, deploys to the rainforest, first killing the terrorists' numerically superior but much less competent militia force, then blowing up the facility and stripping them of all of civilization's aids, including their clothes. The possibility that any of them may return is bleak, as Chavez wryly points out that even with all his equipment and training (Ranger School, among others), 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, Kardiklear. Popov is living on an ranch in Montana, which he bought from the Foster estate; just before he killed him, Foster 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.
[edit] Literary significance and criticism
The novel has been criticized (as evidenced by readers' reviews on Amazon.com) for a narrow view and a number of implausible plot devices. The most common complaint is the infallibility of Rainbow members and the lack of complexity in their characters. International fans were dismayed at stereotypes, such as the British and Australian use of "chaps".
However, the book does have elements that have been seen in real life. The book's premise of a specialized task force consisting of members of several different branches of military created to deal with terrorists is one that was used by the coalition forces in Iraq, i.e., Task Force 145. There are also many principles of hostage stituation tactics and strategies that are employed by police and SWAT forces.
The rather mystical device that is used by the Rainbows to detect life through walls (and later, jungle) is an extrapolation on the DKL Lifeguard, a hand-held device marketed by DKL (www.dklabs.com) with those same claimed abilities. After the initial ballyhoo surrounding the announcement of such a device and its ramifications for all sorts of activities, United States Department of Energy interest in personnel rescue caused the device to be tested by the DOE's Scandia National Labs in New Mexico, with results skeptically reported on James Randi's website. [1] In an LA Times article [2], Clancy admitted, "It's possible I have been conned..."
Regardless of criticism, the novel has sold millions of copies around the world.
[edit] Factual inaccuracies
There are a number of factual inaccuracies in the book, most of them relating to the military
- A Canadian airport was referred to as the RCAF Gander. Since the RCAF ceased to exist in 1968 with the unification of the Canadian Forces any base at Gander would be prefaced by CFB (Canadian Forces Base).
- Clancy refers to the Heckler & Koch MP5/10(MP510A2)submachine gun as the Heckler & Koch MP-10, when it actually is just a MP5 using 10mm ammunition.
- Eddie Price is referred to as a former Colour Sergeant, and spot promoted to Sergeant Major. The SAS does not have Colour Sergeants, but Staff Sergeants, and there is no rank of Sergeant Major - it is an appointment, with the rank normally being that of a Warrant Officer.
- There is no such thing as an "NCO Club" in the British Army. All ranks are members of one of three messes: Officers Mess (for commissioned officers), Sergeants Mess (for sergants and warrant officers), and Junior Ranks Mess (for junior ranks). An officer entering another mess (such as the Sergeants Mess) is highly irregular and requires permission, although the SAS tend to waive such barriers.
- Dave Woods is referred to as a Colour Sergeant in the Royal Military Police, which is a rank that they do not use; he would instead be a Staff Sergeant.
- There is a scene set in a pub in which a footbal game between Manchester United and Glasgow Rangers is shown on the television. At the time of the book's setting, these two teams had never played each other, due to their being in different leagues. Furthermore, the barman describes the result as a 'tie' whereas a British person would almost certainly use the word 'draw'.
[edit] External links
[edit] Release Details
- 1998, USA, G P Putnam's Sons ISBN 0-399-14390-4, Pub date ? August 1998, hardcover
- 1998, UK, Michael Joseph Ltd ISBN 0-7181-4336-1, Pub date 27 August 1998, hardback
- 1998, USA, Putnam Pub Group ISBN 0-399-14413-7, Pub date ? August 1998, hardcover (Limited Edition)
- 1998, USA, Demco Media ISBN 0-606-17207-6, Pub date ? September 1998, unbound
- 1998, USA, Random House ISBN 0-375-70324-1, August 1998, paperback (Large Type Edition)
- 1999, USA, Berkley Pub Group ISBN 0-425-17005-5, Pub date ? September 1999, paperback
- 1999, USA, Berkley Publishing Group ISBN 0-425-17034-9, pub date September 1999, mass market paperback
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