Danny Lynch
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Danny Lynch (real name Daniel Peter Lynch) is a fictional character created by John O'Shea who appears in many of O'Shea's novels. He is an Irish American Catholic.
[edit] Biography
Danny was born in the NYU Medical Center in downtown Manhattan. However, he was born prematurely, as his parents were vacationing at the time. He was raised in the predominantly Irish Catholic neighborhood of Southie in Boston. Despite being raised in Boston, Danny is a devout Yankees fan and takes pride in being a native New Yorker. His father, Pete Lynch, was a Navy SEAL who served in Vietnam and a career FBI agent. When Danny was 11 years old and about to start 6th grade, Pete was promoted to an executive position in Washington. The family then relocated to Alexandria, Virginia. In middle school, Danny befriended Hank Steele, an Anglo-American Protestant classmate. The two quickly became best friends, mostly due to their shared love of the military and conservative political views. In high school, Danny met Maria Bauer, a beautiful girl from Pittsburgh, and almost immediately fell in love with her. However, he was careful to conceal his feelings for her throughout most of their first 2 years of high school.
In January of 2005, during Danny's sophomore year, tragedy struck, as both his parents were killed by UDA terrorists in Northern Ireland while they were attending a U.S./U.K. law enforcement conference. Since there were no relatives able to take him in, and he possessed a relatively high level of financial knowledge which made him able to manage his father's stocks, he was legally emancipated. He beceame lonely living in the family townhouse with only his cat. This led to bouts of depression. Later that spring, he made his feelings for Maria known to her. When she did not reciprocate his feelings, it was the final straw. Seeing it as the only place where he could start fresh, Danny enlisted in the National Guard shortly after the end of his sophomore year. Due to 2 years of Army JROTC in high school, Lynch started out as a Private (E-2). After boot camp, he breezed though Infantry and Airborne Schools. However, the 26-week training to become a Green Beret nearly killed him. Nonetheless, he survived, and became a Green Beret, while being promoted to Private First Class. In spring 2006, Pfc. Lynch was deployed to Afghanistan with the 19th Special Forces Group. Although he only stayed there for 3 months, he saw a lot of combat, and earned a Medal of Honor and a promotion to Corporal after a mission in which he and 3 other Green Berets singlehandedly killed 55 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters while defending a forward position. He returned to Alexandria from Afghanistan in July 2006. Danny went to summer school to make up his junior year, and by September was completely caught up.
[edit] Professional Life
He has performed missions for the Green Berets in Afghanistan, murdered drug dealers in revenge for his girlfriend, Pam Madden's, murder, was recruited by an admiral James Greer into the CIA (and staged his own death right under his Coast Guard petty officer friend's nose) in Without Remorse, one of Clancy's most violent books. He has also helped a Soviet official's wife and daughter defect in The Cardinal of the Kremlin, apprehended and subsequently interrogated two Muslim terrorists in The Sum of All Fears, rescued an abandoned secret military unit in Clear and Present Danger, rescued a Japanese politician who was former prime minister (and later re-elected) in Debt of Honor, and tracked down the source of a bioterrorism plague in Executive Orders. Though John Clark went into action in the operations mentioned earlier, Tom Clancy suggests that Clark's "day job" was head instructor at "the farm", the CIA's Camp Peary training facility for future field agents. He later founded the multinational counterterrorist organization RAINBOW in Rainbow Six, which defeated several terrorist groups and prevented yet another bioterrorism plague before assaulting a Chinese ballistic missile base in The Bear and the Dragon.
He is married to Sandra O'Toole, a nurse who aided in his recovery in a hospital in Without Remorse after a botched recon attempt involving drug runners, and has two daughters, Maggie and Patricia. Patricia is married to Domingo "Ding" Chavez, veteran of a black military operation in Colombia, Clark's recruit and partner at CIA and leader of an assault team at RAINBOW. In Rainbow Six Patricia gives birth to a son, John Conor Chavez, making Clark a grandfather.
John Clark has been awarded the Navy Cross, Silver Star with a repeat cluster, Bronze Star with Valor devices and three repeats, three Purple Hearts and four Intelligence Stars. He is also recipient of the Medal Of Honor, awarded and presented to him by Jack Ryan (then President of the U.S.) for some secret mission during his time in Vietnam (see The Teeth of the Tiger). He is a Simulated Major General (two-stars) in the Rainbow Six book, though he only reached the rank of Chief Boatswain's Mate (Chief Petty Officer) during his Naval career.
Parallels can be drawn between John Clark and Jack Ryan, who both exist within the same fictional universe (Ryanverse). Clark is more capable of bending the rules and operating outside the law than Ryan is, so Clancy uses him in grittier roles. Clark also loathes the "desk work" that Ryan typically finds himself "at home" doing. Clancy himself has stated that John Clark is the "dark side" of Jack Ryan.
By the time Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas started, he had retired from RAINBOW as its commander. Ding Chavez is currently RAINBOW's second and current commanding officer.
