The late Tom Clancy was known for being extremely meticulous when it came to the details in his novels. From his first book, The Hunt for the Red October, the author of the “Ryanverse” stories that focused on the fictional CIA analyst turned Naval Academy professor, then CIA director and eventually president of the United States, was known for doing deep research into the workings of the U.S. government, the global intelligence community (IC), terrorist organizations, and of course Special Forces units. But what does this have to do with Rainbow Six?
Though the plots often relied too much on coincidence, and some of the premises were far-fetched, the accuracy of locations, cultures, and notably different government organizations was extraordinary at times.
Clancy’s series of novels, which continue even though he passed away in 2013 with other authors stepping in, have spawned movies, TV shows, and, notably, the successful Rainbow Six video game franchise. The latter has led to some in the gaming community believing “Rainbow Six” is the name of the Spec Ops unit that was present in several of the books, when in fact, the title of the 1998 novel Rainbow Six actually refers to an individual “John Clark,” who heads the “Rainbow team.”
Who is Rainbow Six – A Man And a Number!
For those who know only the game series, it is complicated. Even for readers of the novels, it is still confusing at times. The quick explanation is that Rainbow Six is the commander of an international Special Forces unit based in Hereford, England, home of the very real British Army’s elite Special Air Service (SAS).
In the 1998 novel and subsequent follow-ups, Rainbow Six is John T. Clark, a former U.S. Navy SEAL who was born John Terence Kelly. If some of this seems familiar to viewers of the Amazon original movie Without Remorse, that’s because Clancy wrote the 1993 source novel that detailed Clark’s (nee Kelly’s) origin story. Amazon’s take was frustrating and pitiful in storytelling and character development. At the same time, it, unfortunately, lacked the realism that Clancy’s work is noted for – and which likely wouldn’t have been made had he still been alive.
The important thing to know is that Clark was introduced in the 1988 novel The Cardinal of the Kremlin. He was a CIA operative who likely wasn’t intended to be a recurring and later main character. However, Clancy apparently decided that Clark would be akin to Jack Ryan’s dark side, and the CIA operative became a breakout character who went on to appear in several novels.
Clancy felt Clark deserved an origin story, and that’s where Without Remorse fits in. Finally, in 1998, he became the lead character in the aforementioned Rainbow Six.
The novel begins as he and Domingo “Ding” Chavez – his operative partner and later son-in-law – and their wives are set to head to the UK to take charge of the newly created “Rainbow” team to deal with threats following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The back story is that it may be hard to remember now, given all the chaos in the world, but the late 1990s were kind of dull politically. Russia was friendly with the West, China was still a second-rate power, and Al-Qaeda was barely on the radar. That changed in August 1998 when the terrorist group conducted its shocking attacks on the U.S. embassies in East Africa – but it was still three years before the events of September 11, 2001, changed the world forever!
In other words, the world was boring, and there was only so much Clancy could write about without the Soviet Union around.
Clancy needed a villain and likely originally planned it would be rogue groups, not an organized threat like the terror cells forming in the Middle East. He certainly didn’t envision the United States would find itself again facing near-peer adversaries like China and Russia!
So why “Six?”
The straight-up answer is that in the U.S. and many partner militaries, six – as in O-6 – is the rank of an Army colonel or Navy captain, which Clark is given when he takes command of the unit. The use of six in the UK is also notable as MI6 is the intelligence service that the equally fictional James Bond served within. The unit’s label originated during the Second World War when it was “section six” of military intelligence, hence M-I-6.
Not lost on some pop culture fanatics, is that “Six” ties to the unknown protagonist in the UK TV series The Prisoner. No explanation was given for why the Prisoner was deemed Number 6, but we know that the answer “Who is Number 1” would be telling!
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The Colors of the Rainbow – Not Benetton
Rainbow is a top-secret international counterterrorism unit made up of two operational squad-sized teams of elite Special Forces from multiple NATO members. It includes soldiers from the SAS, Delta Force, and Germany’s GSG-9 and receives intelligence from the FBI, MI6, Mossad, and other members of the IC community.
Clancy reportedly conceived of the Rainbow team after discussions with Doug Littlejohns, a former Royal Navy officer and submarine commanding officer. Littlejohns had co-founded Red Storm Entertainment with Clancy to produce games based on Clancy’s books and other concepts.
The novel (spoilers) involves Rainbow engaged in various counterterrorist activities—including those conducted behind the scenes by the real-world Carlos the Jackal (who was in prison at the time) and radical eco-terrorists. It was a typical Clancy story that painted vivid pictures of action-packed sequences, even if the overall plot was a bit farfetched.
The eco-terrorists seek to stage attacks to win a security contract for the summer Olympic Games in Australia, where they will start a deadly global pandemic. Clancy was ahead of the curve when it came to seeing the games as a super spreader event!
Very Flawed Premise
Even though Rainbow Six is entertaining, it makes little sense. It could be argued that NATO’s spec ops units already coordinate enough together that there is no need for another elite of the elite team – one that is based in the UK and has to suddenly fly to distant lands. At the same time, events could handle such threats domestically.
It could be speculated that Clancy and Littlejohns saw the potential for both a series of novels and games with Rainbow rather than having to deal with obtaining the rights to the SAS, U.S. Navy SEALs, or other units. With Rainbow, Clancy was able to create the rules and had no licensing issues to contend with – and no doubt trying to get the UK’s Ministry of Defence or the U.S. Department of Defense to sign off would be more challenging than defeating a supervillain.
It would be safe to say that Rainbow works as a game, but in the novels, it ran out of steam pretty quickly.
Showing how much the times have changed, in the 2000 novel The Bear and the Dragon, Clark, and Rainbow help train Russian Spetsnaz operatives as Russia and China inched closer to war.
Eventually, in the Ryanverse, Clark and Chavez leave the unit and later join an off-the-books intelligence agency known as “The Campus,” which, in true Tom Clancy fashion, also recruited Jack Ryan, Jr. – the son of President Jack Ryan.
It is unclear where the name “Rainbow” came from, but supposedly, Clancy took a cue from the African Bishop Desmond Tutu, who described the post-apartheid South Africa under Nelson Mandela’s presidency as the “Rainbow Nation.” Whether that is true remains debatable, but Clancy almost certainly wanted a codename that could describe an international unit.
Was It a Play on SEAL Team Six?
It has also been suggested that the novel (and thus Clark’s rank) was to have been “Rainbow Eight,” but it makes little sense that Clark would be an O-8, which would afford him the rank of major general. Sources claim that Clancy didn’t think Clark should be a “captain,” but this is wrong as it would be a Navy captain, equal to an Army colonel. Although Clark would have likely been the very model of a modern major general, officers at that rank are typically in command of a division consisting of around 6,000 to 25,000 troops – not two squads of Special Forces!
If the rumors are true, it was decided that “Rainbow Six” simply sounded better.
Another popular theory is that Rainbow Six was also meant to play off the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team 6. Still, the Spec Ops unit was actually disbanded in 1987 and only later achieved notoriety. The Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) – which famously was responsible for killing Al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011 – is commonly referred to as SEAL Team Six.
It should be noted that the original SEAL teams were separated between the West Coast (Team One) and East Coast (Team Two). Each team or “squadron” is also commanded by a U.S. Navy commander, an O-5 – and that only further confuses matters!
A fictional “SEAL Team 5” is mentioned in the 1992 film Under Siege, starring Steven Seagal and Tommy Lee Jones. U.S. Navy SEALs were also featured in the 1989 film The Abyss, Navy SEALs (1990), and The Rock (1996) before the release of the original Rainbow Six novel, but it could be argued that “SEAL Team 6” wasn’t really in the modern lexicon.
In the end, it may have simply come down to it just sounding good. (For the record, my gaming handle on many platforms is “PanzerSix” as it does sound good)
The Game Series Continues
While readers of the novel probably understood that Rainbow was the unit and Rainbow Six was the leader, the issue only further became more complicated with the release of the game series, which was developed by the aforementioned Red Storm Entertainment and published by Ubisoft.
The game does try to make the distinction and refers to the team leader as “Six.” And we can imagine that at least someone must have asked if the game was the sixth in a popular series!
The franchise has gained popularity, with gameplay that is different from other military-themed shooters – notably Call of Duty or Battlefield – in that the single-player requires detailed planning, while the multi-player mode requires a far greater level of teamwork as players generally don’t respawn when killed.
However, the most recent title in the series, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction, took a strange shift away from the Spec Ops vs. terrorists and other global threats to one involving aliens! That’s something the most hardcore Clancy fans certainly didn’t see coming, and we can assume the author wouldn’t have liked it in the least!
Rainbow Six and TV – Can We Just Kill It Now?
As noted, Amazon had offered John Clark’s origin story in an original movie, and plans have been announced to produce a series around the exploits of Rainbow. Given how the streaming service handled Jack Ryan’s story, however, we shouldn’t expect much from it.
It made little sense that Ryan and Clark never crossed paths, but apparently, Amazon sought to keep the characters separate.
The final season of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan sunk to a new low, and even worse, it brought in Chavez without Clark. At this rate, it is a wonder why Amazon bothers paying for the rights to the franchise as it fails to stay true to the source material in the least!
Additional Reading:
- CQB: What Can Video Games Teach Us
- This Isn’t a Waffle House, It’s a Waffle Home
- Read more about real-life operators.
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