Tom ClancyRainbow SixThis book was published by G. P.
Putnam’s Sons in New York, USA. Copyright date is 1998. There are 740 pages in this book. Thomas L. Clancy, Jr.
was born on the 12th of April 1947, he is marriedand lives in Maryland, USA. Clancy’s novels can be classified asMilitary-Techno-Thrillers. He has written fiction and non-fiction books,Rainbow Six is a fiction book. As for other titles, well there are justto many to list, in total 23. Some books that he has written are TheHunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, to list afew. According to Clancy Rainbow Six, is one of my all timefavourites.
The book starts with a prologue that introduces us to the one maincharacter, John Clark, an ex-Navy SEAL, and two other characters,Alistair Stanley the executive commander of Rainbow Six, and Domingo(Ding) Chavez, the Captain of Team 2. There are two other insignificantcharacter introduced, Clark’s wife Sandy and his daughter Patsy, who ismarried to Ding. Patsy is pregnant. The other main character is DmitriyArkadeyevich Popov, he is an ex-KGB agent who is now working as a?special consultant’.
He will become very important later on in thebook. Clark is the commander and in charge of starting a new Europeananti-terrorist group called Rainbow Six. Rainbow Six is split into twoteams; Team 1 and Team 2. These teams are the best there is. They arebased in Hereford, England, but any European country can call on them atany time. They run 3 miles in 20 minutes every morning at 6:00 am.
Onlyone team will be on-call at a time. The team that is not on-call willbe doing live fire practices. In the first 6 months of being inoperation they are called on three times which is a lot for this type ofthing. The first incident happens in a Swiss bank where terrorists havetaken control.
They also have hostages. Team 2 successfully takes themout, with only one hostage killed, but he is killed before they hadgotten there. The first mission helps them organize themselves and fixa few holes in their planning. The second mission is in Germany. An international trader is takenhostage in his mansion/castle.
This mission goes well too, thanks tothe snipers. No hostage deaths, but all the terrorists are killed. After this mission is over they realize they should have a helicopterand pilot on the team, this is done. The last mission that they arecalled on in the book is in Spain, in a huge amusement park. Earlier onin the book we hear a conversation in a french high security jail, withthe Jackal and his lawyer.
The Jackal tells his lawyer he is sick ofbeing in jail and to call his friends and they would know what to do. The terrorists at the amusement park are well prepared, but not wellenough to take on the Rainbow Six team. They take 30 children hostage,and demand for the Jackal and several other prisoners release. One ofthe major things that goes awary for the terrorists is that the Rainbowsix have a program that would disable all cellular phones. They varyphones that the terrorists are using to communicate, with each other. Once their communication is out Rainbow Six easily takes them out one byone.
They then take out the large group. Only one child is killed. The terrorists do this killing to show they are serious. One terroristgoes outside and takes a child that is in a wheelchair and shoots her inthe back. The team just had to sit there and watch.
If they hadinterrupted, they know more children will die. In the meantime while this is happening, Popov, the ex-KGB agent nowfreelance is hired by an American. Popov is hired to get people to dothe job in Switzerland, the bank taking, and the taking of theinternational trader in Germany. The person that has hired him is thepresident of a multi-national pharmaceutical company, that has access toand deals with extremely deadly viruses, he is extremely wealthy. Letscall him the Boss (sorry forgot his name). Popov has nothing to do withthe hostage taking of the children in Spain, that was the Jackal.
Popovis living in New York will he is organizing these jobs and flies backand forth from Europe to organize them. After all three incidentshappen, Popov thought there was something weird about the way the takedowns went. So he started watching tapes of the take downs by themedia. He sees the same person smoking a cigar after each mission, heputs things together and realizes all the take downs are done by thesame team.
Popov tells the Boss, who, through his numerous connections,one of them being Bill Henriksen he is the president of Global Security,finds out it is the Rainbow Six team. This worries him because theycould get in the way of his ultimate goal. So he has Popov do one morejob, to attack Rainbow Six in their home base, Hereford,England. Popovgoes to Ireland where he knows some IRA people that would do this, for afee of course, 5 million dollars and weapons.
The IRA people decide to go after Clark’s wife and daughter, since theyare the easiest to get at, in the hospital they both work at. Theirplan works well, they take them Sandy and Pasty hostage and they getboth teams to come out and stop them. The IRA’s goal is only to takeout about 5 of the Rainbow Six team’s enough to disable them. Then theyhave the same problem the terrorist in Spain did they used cell phonesso when Rainbow used there scrambler they started to fall apart.
Someof the IRA people tried to escape unsuccessfully and others stayed withthe hostages to use as bargaining tools. The physiologist on the teamwas able to talk them into surrendering. No civilian casualties, but 2Rainbow people where killed and one injured. Most of the IRA peoplewere killed except a few of them and, the leader he was badly injured.
When the leader was coming out of unconsciousness they managed trickinghim into talking and telling them who put him up to this. They managedto track it back to Popov, but they could not find him, he was in NewYork by now. During this time, Global Security gets a contract from the Australiangovernment, because they are about to host the Olympics. The whole point of the Boss having these operations done is to get theAustralians thinking they need a security consultant company to keep theOlympics safe.
The only problem is that the Australians have also askedthat some people from Rainbow Six be there. But the Boss tellsHenriksen to go ahead with the mission, which if successful, could meanthe end of human life on the planet as we know it!This book ends with the goods guys winning, but you are sitting on theedge of your seat for the last few chapters. The ending is slightlycomedic. This book was extremely well written, giving you clues as to what ishappening as it goes along. I found that character development was donevery well, you could relate to everyone, understand them and know whatthey where going to do next. But what made this book great is the plot,the way it slowly expands and just the main idea of the plot makes youthink, what if?(If you want to know how the book ends read on, if not stop reading, Iwill explain it in a few lines.
)The Boss and several thousand other people who know about this missionare extreme environmentalists. They believe that humankind should bewiped off the face of the plant except them, who will treat the plantwith respect. So they plant a deadly virus at the Australian Olympics. But when Popov finds out what they are doing he goes right to Clark, whotells his men in Australia and they make sure the virus is notreleased.
Then the Rainbow team raids the environmentalists compound inBrazil and destroy it. Only a few hundred of the important radicals arein Brazil. The important ones (leaders) left the compound in the States(their main headquarters) for Brail when they knew the plan was notgoing well. They knew something was wrong because they had not heardfrom Henriksen who was caught trying to release the virus in Australia. The radicals including the Boss was left totally naked in the middle ofthe Brazilian rain forest. Because Clark knows they could never betried in any court for various reasons.
