This book was published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in New York, USA. The 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 married and lives in Maryland, USA. Clancy’s novels can be classified as Military-Techno-Thrillers. He has written fiction and nonfiction books, Rainbow Six is a fiction book. As for other titles, well there are just too many to list, in total 23. Some books that he has written are The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, to list a few. According to Clancy “Rainbow Six, is one of my all-time favorites.”
The book starts with a prologue that introduces us to the one main character, 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 insignificant characters introduced, Clark’s wife Sandy and his daughter Patsy, who is married to Ding. Patsy is pregnant. The other main character is Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov, he is an ex-KGB agent who is now working as a ‘special consultant’. He will become very important later on in the book.
Clark is the commander and in charge of starting a new European anti-terrorist group called Rainbow Six. Rainbow Six is split into two teams; Team 1 and Team 2. These teams are the best there is. They are based in Hereford, England, but any European country can call on them at any time.
They run 3 miles in 20 minutes every morning at 6:00 am. Only one team will be on-call at a time. The team that is not on-call will be doing live fire practices. In the first 6 months of being in operation, they are called on three times which is a lot for this type of thing. The first incident happens in a Swiss bank where terrorists have taken control. They also have hostages. Team 2 successfully takes them out, with only one hostage killed, but he is killed before they had gotten there.
The first mission helps them organize themselves and fix a few holes in their planning. The second mission is in Germany. An international trader is taken hostage in his mansion/castle. This mission goes well too, thanks to the snipers. No hostage deaths, but all the terrorists are killed.
After this mission is over they realize they should have a helicopter and pilot on the team, this is done. The last mission that they are called on in the book is in Spain, in a huge amusement park. Earlier on in the book, we hear a conversation in a French high-security jail, with the Jackal and his lawyer. The Jackal tells his lawyer he is sick of being 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 well enough to take on the Rainbow Six team.
They take 30 children hostage, and demand for the Jackal and several other prisoners’ release. One of the major things that goes against the terrorists is that the Rainbow six have a program that would disable all cellular phones. They vary phones that the terrorists are using to communicate, with each other.
Once their communication is out Rainbow Six easily takes them out one by one. They then take out the large group. Only one child is killed. The terrorists do this killing to show they are serious. One terrorist goes outside and takes a child that is in a wheelchair and shoots her in the back. The team just had to sit there and watch. If they had interrupted, they know more children will die.
In the meantime, while this is happening, Popov, the ex-KGB agent now freelance is hired by an American. Popov is hired to get people to do the job in Switzerland, the bank taking, and the taking of the international trader in Germany. The person that has hired him is the president of a multi-national pharmaceutical company, that has access to and deals with extremely deadly viruses, he is extremely wealthy.
Let’s call him the Boss (sorry forgot his name). Popov has nothing to do with the hostage-taking of the children in Spain, which was the Jackal. Popov is living in New York will he is organizing these jobs and flies back and forth from Europe to organize them. After all three incidents happen, Popov thought there was something weird about the way the take downs went.
So he started watching tapes of the take downs by the media. He sees the same person smoking a cigar after each mission; he puts things together and realizes all the take downs are done by the same 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 they could get in the way of his ultimate goal. So he has Popov do one more job, to attack Rainbow Six in their home base, Hereford, England. Popov goes to Ireland where he knows some IRA people that would do this, for a fee, of course, 5 million dollars and weapons. The IRA people decide to go after Clark’s wife and daughter, since they are the easiest to get at, in the hospital, they both work at. Their plan works well, they take Sandy and Pasty hostage and they get both teams to come out and stop them.
The IRA’s goal is only to take out about 5 of the Rainbow Six team’s enough to disable them. Then they have the same problem the terrorist in Spain did they used cell phones so when Rainbow used their scrambler they started to fall apart. Some of the IRA people tried to escape unsuccessfully and others stayed with the hostages to use as bargaining tools. The physiologist on the team was able to talk them into surrendering. No civilian casualties, but 2
Rainbow people were killed and one injured. Most of the IRA people were killed except a few of them and, the leader was badly injured. When the leader was coming out of unconsciousness they managed to trick him into talking and telling them who put him up to this. They managed to track it back to Popov, but they could not find him, he was in New York by now.
During this time, Global Security gets a contract from the Australian government, because they are about to host the Olympics. The whole point of the Boss having these operations done is to get the Australians thinking they need a security consultant company to keep the Olympics safe. The only problem is that the Australians have also asked that some people from Rainbow Six be there. But the Boss tells Henriksen to go ahead with the mission, which if successful, could mean the end of human life on the planet as we know it! This book ends with the good guys winning, but you are sitting on the edge of your seat for the last few chapters. The ending is slightly comedic.
