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1998 novel by Tom Clancy From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
First edition cover | |
| Author | Tom Clancy |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Series | John Clark |
| Genre | |
| Set in | Ryanverse |
| Publisher | G.P. Putnam's Sons |
Publication date | August 3, 1998 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
| Pages | 740 |
| ISBN | 0399143904 |
| Preceded by | Without Remorse |
The novel debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.[1] 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.
Formerly state-sponsored terrorist groups go rogue after the end of the Cold War, while international terrorism in general begins to rise. 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, supplemented 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 are deployed to Austria, where German left-wing terrorists have taken over the schloss of a wealthy Austrian businessman to obtain (nonexistent) "special access codes" to the international trading markets. They are later deployed to the Worldpark amusement park in Spain, where terrorists, including Basque revolutionaries, have taken a group of children hostage, killing one to demonstrate their ruthless determination. They demand that various prisoners, including Carlos the Jackal, be released. Team-2 eliminates all the terrorists without losing any more hostages.
Clark and his colleagues become suspicious about three terrorist attacks occurring within a few weeks. Unbeknownst to them, the attacks are part of an intricate plan 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 concerns of terrorism, allowing co-conspirator Bill Henriksen's security firm to land 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 when they return 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 innoculated with the real vaccine, would then inherit the emptied world, justifying their genocidal actions as "saving the world" from environmentally destructive humanity.
Popov discovers the existence of Rainbow when he reviews videos of the "police tactical teams" (actually Rainbow in disguise) that thwarted his attacks, and brings it to Brightling's attention. Brightling and Henriksen order Popov to orchestrate an attack on Rainbow to prevent them from being deployed to the Sydney Olympics. 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, militants hiding in trucks ambush them, killing two Team-1 troopers and injuring several others, including Stanley. Despite sustaining their first-ever losses, Rainbow manages to retake the hospital without further casualties, and kill or capture the militants. From interrogation of the survivors, Clark and Chavez learn of Popov's involvement, while Brightling evacuates Popov to Horizon's OLYMPUS facility in Kansas. Hours after the attack is thwarted, Patricia delivers Chavez's son.
However, moving Popov to OLYMPUS turns out to be a fatal miscalculation: Popov was unaware of the genocidal plans of his employer, but one of the people at OLYMPUS tells him about the Project. Popov, appalled by what he had unknowingly assisted, kills him, escapes, and reveals what he knows to Clark. Popov's warning comes just in time for Chavez and Team-2, who were deployed to the Olympics to evaluate the security measures, to thwart Shiva's release at the last minute.
Their plans in shambles, Brightling orders all incriminating material and files destroyed, and he and all Project members who know the full plan flee to a smaller Horizon base in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. Clark personally leads both Rainbow teams to the base. Brightling sends some of his armed but mostly untrained men out to ambush them, but they are easily killed. Brightling surrenders, confident his lawyers can get him off since there is no real evidence against him and his people. However, Clark orders the survivors to strip naked, has their clothes confiscated and facilities demolished, and leaves them to fend for themselves in the middle of the Amazon jungle, taunting them to "reconnect with nature".
Six months later, Chavez reads a news article about Popov (who was not prosecuted, instead being pardoned for all involvement due to his knowledge) 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. Chavez given the killers no further thought, continuing to fight with Rainbow and raising his son. Clark muses that while humanity does what it can to protect the natural environment, nature does not distinguish between friends and enemies; he surmises that humanity is its own worst enemy.
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,[2][3] rather than blanket hunger for power and brash misanthropic resentment.[4][5] 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.[3][6][7]
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.[8] 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".[8] The strategy shooter game Littlejohns suggested was eventually developed into Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six.[8]
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".[9]
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."[10] Entertainment Weekly also noted that "some of [Clancy's] secondary characters have a flat, dime-novel feel".[11] 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."[12]
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.[8] 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.[13] 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.[14][15]
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.[16] Other screenwriters including Michael Schiffer,[17][18] Bill Wisher,[19] Art Monterastelli,[20] Frank Cappello,[21] and John Enbom[22] had all worked on the script at various stages. Directors such as John Woo[23][24] and Zack Snyder[25] 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.[26] Ryan Reynolds was reported to be in early talks to play John Clark.[27] 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.[28] In January 2023, the Rainbow Six film was confirmed to be directed by Chad Stahelski, with Michael B. Jordan reprising his role as Clark.[29][30]
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