Rainbow Six (novel)

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Rainbow Six is a techno-thriller novel written by Tom Clancy and released on August 3, 1998. It is the second book to primarily focus on John Clark, one of the recurring characters in the Ryanverse, after Without Remorse (1993); it also features his son-in-law, Domingo "Ding" Chavez. Rainbow Six follows "Rainbow", a secret international counterterrorist organization headed by Clark (codenamed "Rainbow Six"), and the complex apocalyptic conspiracy they unravel after handling multiple seemingly random terrorist attacks.

The novel debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the action scenes and suspense but criticized the writing of some characters and its unrealistic plot. It also received some backlash from the environmental movement for its negative depiction of radical environmentalism. The novel's sequel, The Bear and the Dragon, was released in 2000.

Rainbow Six was adapted into a video game, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, which was developed by Red Storm Entertainment in tandem with the novel and released later that August to critical and commercial success, spawning a highly successful series of video games currently owned by Ubisoft. A film adaptation, set to be the sequel to the 2021 film adaptation of Without Remorse, was announced in 2017 and was confirmed to be directed by Chad Stahelski in 2023, with an unannounced release date.

Plot

In the 1990s, formerly state-sponsored terrorist groups go rogue after the end of the Cold War, while international terrorism worsens. To combat this, CIA operative John Clark forms a top-secret international counterterrorist organization known as Rainbow. Based in Hereford, England, Rainbow consists of two operational squad-sized teams of elite special forces soldiers from NATO countries, supported by intelligence and technology experts from the FBI, MI6, and Mossad. Clark serves as Rainbow's commanding officer (callsign "Rainbow Six"), SAS officer Alistair Stanley serves as their second-in-command, and Clark's son-in-law Domingo Chavez leads Team-2.

In their first deployment, Team-2 rescues hostages during a bank robbery in Bern, Switzerland. Several weeks later, they intervene in a hostage-taking at a schloss in Austria, committed by Cold War-era German left-wing terrorists. They are then deployed to resolve a hostage crisis at the Worldpark amusement park in Spain, where Basque revolutionaries, demanding the release of Carlos the Jackal, execute a child hostage. Team-2 eliminates the terrorists without losing any more hostages.

Clark and his colleagues become suspicious about the spate of major terrorist attacks occurring within a few weeks. Unbeknownst to them, the attacks are part of an intricate conspiracy to wipe out nearly all of humanity, codenamed "the Project". Dr. John Brightling, a staunch radical environmentalist who heads a biotechnology firm called the Horizon Corporation, ordered the attacks through ex-KGB officer Dmitriy Popov to raise fears of terrorism, allowing co-conspirator Bill Henriksen's security firm to secure a key contract for the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. Henriksen would then ensure the release of "Shiva"—a manmade Ebola biological agent more deadly than the one that spread a year prior, developed by Horizon and tested on kidnapped human test subjects—through the fog-cooling system of Stadium Australia, infecting everyone present, who would spread Shiva after returning to their home countries. The resulting pandemic would kill countless people, during which Horizon would distribute a "vaccine"—actually a slow-acting version of Shiva—ensuring the deaths of the rest of the world's population. Brightling's "chosen few", having been inoculated with the real vaccine, would then inherit the emptied world, justifying their genocidal actions as "saving the world" from environmentally-destructive human society.

Popov discovers the existence of Rainbow when he reviews footage of the "police tactical teams" (actually Rainbow in disguise) that thwarted his attacks, and alerts Brightling and Henriksen, who order Popov to orchestrate an attack on Rainbow to cripple their operations. Popov persuades a Provisional Irish Republican Army splinter group to seize a hospital near Rainbow's base and capture Clark's wife Sandra and Chavez's pregnant wife Patricia, who work there as a nurse and a doctor, respectively. When Rainbow arrives, IRA militants ambush them, killing two Team-1 troopers and injuring several others, including Stanley. Despite sustaining their first-ever losses, Rainbow manages to defeat the militants and retake the hospital without further casualties. Clark and Chavez interrogate the IRA cell leader and learn of Popov's involvement, while Brightling moves Popov to Horizon's OLYMPUS facility in Kansas. Hours after the attack is thwarted, Patricia delivers Chavez's son.

At OLYMPUS, a Project member inadvertently reveals the truth about the Project to Popov, who was unaware of the genocidal plan. Appalled by what he had unknowingly assisted, Popov kills him, flees OLYMPUS, and turns himself in to Clark and the FBI to inform him of Horizon's plan, just in time for Chavez and Team-2, who were deployed to the Olympics to evaluate security measures, to thwart Shiva's release at the last minute.

Their plans in shambles, Brightling and the Project members flee to a remote Horizon compound in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. Clark personally leads both Rainbow teams to the base, easily defeats their untrained ad hoc security force, and detains Brightling and his fellow conspirators. Aware that Brightling destroyed all evidence and that he will simply restart the Project after his likely acquittal, Clark orders the compound to be razed, has the Project members stripped of all clothes and belongings, and leaves them to fend for themselves in the jungle, taunting them to "reconnect with nature".

Six months later, Chavez reads a news article about Popov (who was pardoned for providing intelligence) discovering a rich gold deposit on a Project member's former property he had purchased, and Horizon's revolutionary medical breakthroughs under new management. Chavez asks if the Project members survived; Clark informs him that no human activity has been detected in the area since, and muses that while humanity does what it can to protect the natural environment, nature does not distinguish between friends and enemies. Chavez surmises that humanity is its own worst enemy.

Characters

Team Rainbow

Executive and support branches

  • John Clark: Commander of Rainbow
  • Alistair Stanley: Deputy Commander
  • Bill Tawney: Head of the intelligence section, former MI6 intelligence analyst
  • Dr. Paul Bellow: Resident psychologist specializing in criminal psychology, FBI agent
  • Tim Noonan: Resident tactical electronics and surveillance specialist, FBI special agent
  • David Peled: Technical staff lead, Mossad agent
  • Sam Bennett: Communications officer, U.S. Air Force major
  • Daniel "Bear" Malloy: Pilot of Rainbow's MH-60K Night Hawk helicopter, United States Marine Corps lieutenant colonel
  • Dave Woods: Firing range instructor, British colour sergeant
  • Alice Foorgate and Helen Montgomery: Executive secretaries
  • Katherine Moony: Secretary

Team-1

Team-2

  • Domingo "Ding" Chavez: Team-2 commander, former CIA Special Activities Division member, Clark's son-in-law, and former Army Special Operations soldier
  • Eddie Price: Deputy Commander, Senior member, former SAS sergeant major, pipe smoker
  • Julio "Oso" Vega: heavy weapons operator, former Delta Force member
  • Louis Loiselle: Specialist, former DGSE member
  • George Tomlinson: Former Delta Force member
  • Mike Pierce: Former 82nd Airborne Division member
  • Steve Lincoln: Former Delta Force member
  • Scotty McTyler: Former SAS member
  • Hank Patterson: Former Delta Force member
  • Paddy Connolly: Demolitions expert, former SAS member
  • Homer Johnston: Sniper, former Delta Force member
  • Dieter Weber: Sniper, German former GSG 9 Feldwebel

Horizon Corporation and the Project

  • John Brightling: Billionaire chairman of Horizon Corporation, mastermind of the Project
  • Bill Henriksen: Security consultant, head of Global Security, former FBI agent and Hostage Rescue Team member
  • Carol Brightling: Science Advisor to the President, "former" wife of John Brightling (their divorce being a ruse used to safeguard her position, enabling her to pass government secrets to Horizon)
  • John Killgore: Senior research scientist involved in testing the Shiva virus
  • Barbara Archer: Researcher involved in testing the Shiva virus
  • Kirk Maclean: Researcher tasked with kidnapping homeless men and single women in New York City to be used as Shiva test subjects; also a member of the Sierra Club
  • Steve Berg: Researcher tasked with developing the vaccine to Shiva
  • Lani Palacheck: Researcher working under John Killgore, on Shiva transmission study
  • Mark Waterhouse: Recruiter for Brightling
  • Foster Hunnicutt: Survivalist, member of Brightling's "chosen few"
  • Wilson Gearing: Former United States Army Chemical Corps lieutenant colonel, tasked with releasing Shiva at the Olympics
  • David Dawson: Chief of security at the OLYMPUS base, ex-Army
  • Benjamin Farmer: Ex-Marine, security guard for Horizon
  • Dick Voss: Former Army sergeant major at Fort Bragg (Special Operations Training Center), now working for Global Security

Other characters

  • Dmitriy Arkadyevich Popov: Former KGB operations officer let go due to budget cuts, working for Brightling
  • Sandra "Sandy" Clark: John Clark's wife, nurse
  • Patricia "Patsy" Clark-Chavez: John Clark's daughter and Domingo Chavez's pregnant wife, MD
  • Ernst Model: Sociopathic former Red Army Faction member who leads the botched bank robbery in Bern
  • Hans Fürchtner: Left-wing terrorist, recruited by Popov to take over the schloss of a wealthy Austrian businessman
  • Petra Dortmund: Left-wing terrorist, Fürchtner's longtime partner
  • Erwin Ostermann: Austrian financier taken hostage by Fürchtner and Dortmund at his schloss
  • Andre Herr: Former Action Directe member leading the terrorists at Worldpark
  • Sean Grady: Hardline Provisional IRA cell commander who leads the attack on the Hereford hospital
  • Tom Sullivan: FBI agent based in New York investigating Mary Bannister's disappearance
  • Frank Chatham: FBI agent, Sullivan's partner
  • Ed Foley: Director of Central Intelligence
  • Mary Pat Foley: CIA Deputy Director for Operations and Ed Foley's wife
  • Mary Bannister: Shiva test subject who manages to email her father, alerting the FBI

Themes

Rainbow Six explores the issue of radical environmentalism. According to Marc Cerasini's essay on the novel, the philosophy of the antagonists are considered as an extreme form of naturalism, based on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's view that society's functions corrupt mankind and that "a natural or primitive state is actually morally superior to civilization". The novel shares elements found in James Bond movies: a biological weapon being used to end or rather cull the human race, mad scientists plotting world domination, and high-tech secret bases hidden from civilization. Clancy makes the plot relevant and morally ambiguous by incorporating motivations similar to those of real-life radical ecocentric environmentalists and deep ecologists, such as Pentti Linkola and Paul R. Ehrlich,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=":1">Template:Cite web</ref> rather than blanket hunger for power and brash misanthropic resentment.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In several regards, critics have noted similarities in the population control regard to the later-released Kingsman: The Secret Service and Dan Brown's Inferno, as well as those of Thanos in Marvel's Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.<ref name=":1" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Development

The concept of Rainbow Six was conceived from a discussion between Clancy and Doug Littlejohns, a former Royal Navy submarine commander and CEO of Red Storm Entertainment, a video game development company co-founded by Clancy in 1996. Their discussion occurred during a Red Storm company outing in Colonial Williamsburg, when Littlejohns suggested a strategy shooter game based on the FBI Hostage Rescue Team. When Clancy mentioned that he was writing a novel about a hostage rescue team, their conversation led to Littlejohns noting the protracted diplomatic delays in authorizing a foreign counterterrorist unit's deployment overseas, and he suggested the concept of a permanent counterterrorist unit that already had authorization to deploy internationally.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite news</ref> The name "Rainbow" came from the term "Rainbow nation", a term coined by Desmond Tutu to describe post-apartheid South Africa under Nelson Mandela's presidency. "Six" came from the American rank code for captain (O-6); though Clark would more accurately be described as a major general (O-8) in the novel, "Rainbow Six" read better than "Rainbow Eight".<ref name=":0" /> The strategy shooter game Littlejohns suggested was eventually developed into Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six.<ref name=":0" />

Reception

Commercial

The book debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. It also debuted at number one on the USA Today's Best-selling Books list for the week of August 13, 1998.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Critical

The book received mixed reviews. Entertainment Weekly praised the novel's "sprawling, Bondesque plot" as well as its action scenes that are "vivid and cinematic—and notably lacking in the clichés and B-movie tone of his dialogue". Publishers Weekly also hailed the scenes as "immensely suspenseful, breathtaking combos of expertly detailed combat and primal emotion".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Criticism focused on flat characters and the implausibility of the plot. A review from Orlando Sentinel stated: "Clancy may have crossed the line into the realm of the unbelievable...I suspect even some of his most rabid fans will shake their heads at parts of this novel."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Entertainment Weekly also noted that "some of [Clancy's] secondary characters have a flat, dime-novel feel".<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Canadian environmentalist Paul Watson condemned the book as "a vicious defamation of the Environmentalist Movement, embodying, amplifying and packaging all the worst stereotypes and prejudices."<ref>Paul G. Watson, "Propaganda, Lies and Vicious Lies", in The Rainbow Quarterly, Autumn 2001</ref>

Adaptations

Video game

Template:Main Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six was released on August 21, 1998, about two weeks after the release of the novel. It was developed alongside the novel and bases its plot on an early manuscript of the story.<ref name=":0" /> The game was developed by Red Storm Entertainment (which was co-founded by Clancy in 1996) based on their preexisting concept of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team in an international setting.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six was a commercial success for Red Storm and spawned a number of sequels, now developed by Ubisoft. It revolutionized the first-person shooter genre by forcing the player to think tactically and realistically in every mission, unlike the arcade-style shooters of the time.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Film adaptation

The film rights to the novel were brought to Paramount Pictures by Michael Ovitz through his Artists Management Group in March 1999, with writer Jonathan Hensleigh in talks to pen the screenplay adaptation, and Ovitz attached as producer.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Other screenwriters including Michael Schiffer,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Bill Wisher,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Art Monterastelli,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Frank Cappello,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and John Enbom<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> had all worked on the script at various stages. Directors such as John Woo<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Zack Snyder<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> had previously been attached to direct.

In July 2017, Paramount Pictures announced plans to make a film adaptation of the novel with Akiva Goldsman as producer, and a new draft penned by Josh Appelbaum & André Nemec.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Ryan Reynolds was reported to be in early talks to play John Clark.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In September 2018, Michael B. Jordan was announced to be playing John Clark in a two-part film series, with Rainbow Six as the intended sequel to Without Remorse.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In January 2023, the Rainbow Six film was confirmed to be directed by Chad Stahelski, with Michael B. Jordan reprising his role as Clark.,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and writers Daniel Fajemisin-Duncan and Marlon Smith tapped to write the screenplay.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Release details

  • 1998, U.S., G. P. Putnam's Sons Template:ISBN, Pub date August 3, 1998, hardcover
  • 1998, U.K., Michael Joseph Ltd Template:ISBN, Pub date August 27, 1998, hardback
  • 1998, U.S., Putnam Publishing Group Template:ISBN, Pub date August 1998, hardcover (Limited Edition)
  • 1998, U.S., Demco Media Template:ISBN, Pub date September 1998, unbound
  • 1998, U.S., Random House Template:ISBN, Pub date August 1998, paperback (Large Type Edition)
  • 1999, U.S., Berkley Publishing Group Template:ISBN, Pub date September 1999, paperback
  • 1999, U.S., Berkley Publishing Group Template:ISBN, Pub date September 1999, mass market paperback

References

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