Despite publication nearly three decades ago, the book Rainbow Six and the elite organization within it, remain firmly Ryanverse fan favorites. It was this book and the character of John Clark that got me into the series. Sadly, there’s never been a follow up and it’s my view this book, more than any other, deserved a sequel. Since it’s original publication, fans of Rainbow have had to get by with scraps of information on subsequent Rainbow exploits.

With the ongoing presence of John Clark, and his legendary status as the original Rainbow Six, the question has never been far from readers lips: What happened to Rainbow?

In this article, I’m going to do a full breakdown of Rainbow, as well as answer: what happened to Rainbow? And perhaps suggest a concept sequel.

Establishment and Purpose

Rainbow was a highly classified, multinational counterterrorist organization established to combat the threat of international terrorism in the immediate post-Cold War era. Proposed by John Clark and authorized by U.S. President Jack Ryan, with support from NATO intelligence agencies, the organisation was designed to be blacker than black, covertly funded through the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Pentagon’s Office of Special Projects.

The organization was headquartered in Hereford, United Kingdom, sharing a base with the British 22nd Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment. Hereford was chosen due to the SAS’s unmatched special operations experience, London’s excellent commercial air travel accessibility, favorable British legal restrictions regarding the press, and the special relationship between U.S. and British intelligence.

Original Key Personnel

Rainbow was composed of elite military and intelligence operatives drawn primarily from the U.S., U.K., and allied nations:

• John Clark (Rainbow Six): The organization’s creator and overarching commander, a highly experienced former Navy SEAL and CIA paramilitary officer.
• Alistair Stanley: Clark’s Executive Officer (XO) and second-in-command, a former SAS Major and British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) operative.
• Major Peter Covington: Commander of Team-1, an exceptionally skilled former SAS officer.
• Major Domingo “Ding” Chavez: Commander of Team-2, a former U.S. Army infantryman and CIA field officer, also Clark’s son-in-law.
• Bill Tawney: Chief of Intelligence, a veteran operative of Britain’s SIS.
• David Peled: Chief Technical Officer, an electronics expert seconded from the Israeli Mossad.
• Dr. Paul Bellow: The team’s psychologist and primary hostage negotiator.
• Tim Noonan: Technical and electronics specialist recruited from the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team.
• Lt. Col. Daniel “Bear” Malloy: A U.S. Marine Corps special-operations helicopter pilot brought in to provide Rainbow with dedicated, expert aviation support.
• The Shooters: The tactical teams consist of elite operators, including snipers Dieter Weber (Germany) and Homer Johnston (U.S.), Sergeant Major Eddie Price (U.K.), Julio “Oso” Vega (U.S.), Louis Loiselle (France), and Paddy Connolly (U.K. explosives expert).

Operational Exploits

Rainbow’s operators saw continuous action shortly after the unit’s inception in Rainbow Six. It’s an op-tempo for Rainbow we haven’t ever see again in the series.

• United Airlines Flight 920 Hijacking: While traveling to England to formally establish Rainbow, Clark, Chavez, and Stanley foil an airplane hijacking orchestrated by Basque separatists. Using hand-to-hand combat and concealed weapons, the three men seamlessly disarm and capture all three terrorists without any civilian casualties.
• Bern Commercial Bank Rescue: Team-2 is deployed to Bern, Switzerland, where former Baader-Meinhof terrorist Ernst Model and his crew hold hostages in a bank. After Model executes a hostage, Chavez leads an assault using explosives and flash-bangs. The team eliminates all four terrorists with precision headshots in seconds, saving the remaining hostages.
• Worldpark Amusement Park: A multi-faction terrorist group takes over a Spanish amusement park. They hold over 30 children hostage in the park’s castle and demand the release of Carlos the Jackal. When the terrorists cold-bloodedly murder a terminally ill Dutch girl, Rainbow executes a highly coordinated assault. A sniper takes out the roof sentry, while shooters rappel from Malloy’s helicopter and breach the windows. They kill the terrorists and rescue the children.
• Hereford Hospital Attack: Seeking revenge and international prestige, a ruthless Provisional IRA faction led by Sean Grady attacks the community hospital near Rainbow’s base, taking Chavez’s pregnant wife and Clark’s wife hostage. Rainbow troops rapidly engage the terrorists outdoors, destroying their getaway vehicles and inflicting heavy casualties. Trapped inside the hospital, the surviving IRA members are psychologically worn down by Dr. Bellow and eventually surrender to Team-2.
• Project Alternate (Brazil): Rainbow uncovers a massive conspiracy led by billionaire eco-terrorist John Brightling, who plans to distribute a genetically engineered Shiva virus at the Sydney Olympics to wipe out most of humanity and restore nature. After an FBI agent attached to Rainbow captures the virus deliveryman in Sydney, Clark leads a covert deployment to Brightling’s jungle fortress in Brazil. Rather than arresting the conspirators, Rainbow completely destroys the facility’s infrastructure with explosives, strips the eco-terrorists naked, and abandons them in the jungle to live in the harmony with nature they claimed to worship.

Downtime and Cross-Training in the UK

In The Bear and the Dragon, we are told that following a leaked news story that dubbed Rainbow the “Men of Black” and exaggerated their already formidable skills, European terrorism slowed to a crawl out of fear. During this quiet period, the team focused intensely on simulated tactical scenarios and range shooting to maintain their edge. During this time, they integrated Ettore Falcone, a former Carabinieri officer sent to Hereford for his own protection, who became the first Italian member of Rainbow and the team’s unmatched top pistol shot.

Spetsnaz Training Mission in Russia

Rainbow Commander John Clark and Ding Chavez were dispatched to Moscow to train the former KGB’s Eighth Chief Directorate (their executive protective service) in counter-terrorism tactics. To bring the Russian Spetsnaz up to Rainbow’s elite standards, they transferred five complete team-sets of specialized weapons, including MP-10 submachine guns, Beretta .45 pistols, and secure radio gear.

Russian Counter-Intelligence and Arrest Operations

While Clark and Chavez were in Russia, an assassination attempt was carried out against Russian intelligence chief Sergey Golovko. As the geopolitical situation rapidly deteriorated into a war with China, Clark and Chavez suited up in their black tactical gear to serve as observers and advisors during a flawless Spetsnaz raid on a Chinese conspirator’s apartment. As the war escalated, Clark prepared his operatives to deploy via helicopter alongside Russian forces to engage the enemy.

The Tripoli Embassy Hostage Rescue

In Dead or Alive, as Rainbow moved into its second generation with many original members rotating out to their parent services, a crisis erupted when eight armed men bypassed local police and seized the Swedish embassy in Tripoli, Libya. Under the direction of second-in-command Alistair Stanley, an eight-man strike team deployed to a staging base in Italy before flying covertly into Libya. Utilizing flexi-cams to scout under doors and a specialized breaching tool called “Gatecrasher,” the team stormed the embassy, killing all eight terrorists and rescuing the hostages with only minor injuries. Shortly after this successful mission, Clark and Chavez retired from Rainbow.

The Baikonur Cosmodrome Crisis

In Locked On, in a massive escalation, Dagestani terrorists seized nuclear-tipped rockets at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. A forty-man Rainbow contingent was deployed under the command of Swedish General Lars Gummesson. At the explicit request of the Russian President, John Clark was temporarily reinstated to take absolute command of Rainbow for the crisis.

Under severe weather conditions, twenty Rainbow operators executed a dangerous nighttime High Altitude High Opening (HAHO) parachute jump into the facility. Eighteen operators hit the drop zone, blew open the steel doors of the Launch Control Center, and engaged the terrorists in a bloody firefight. While Chavez secured the launch keys, other Rainbow teams assaulted the launch silos, eliminating the remaining hostiles and successfully rendering the nuclear weapons safe. The brutal operation ultimately cost Rainbow five dead and seven wounded.

The Rainbow Legacy

Although Rainbow eventually ceases active operations, its legacy, training, and operational model continue to be referenced heavily in later years.

Even after separating from the unit, Ding Chavez and John Clark continue to rely on their Rainbow connections. In Command Authority, Chavez leverages contacts he made with men he served with in Rainbow to gather intelligence in Russia and Ukraine regarding a Russian mobster known as Gleb the Scar. Meanwhile, Clark reflects on a past Rainbow hostage rescue in Kiev; although they cleaned out the hostiles and saved the remaining hostages, he expresses frustration that bureaucratic delays in getting the green light from the Russians prevented the team from saving several executed state ministers.

The intense training and reputation of the unit leave a lasting impact on its veterans. Chavez fondly, and sometimes unfondly, remembers his time in Rainbow, specifically his hatred for the dunker helicopter crash survival training that Clark mandated for every Rainbow member, as recalled in Shadow of the Dragon. Ding’s history as an original member of Rainbow is remembered in Zero Hour alongside his operational motto, “if you’re gonna be stupid, you’d better be tough”. Decades later, Clark remains highly revered for his tenure as Rainbow’s first commander, with younger Campus operative, Jack Jr., acknowledging in Flash Point that “there was still only one Rainbow Six”.

So what happened to Rainbow?

Details are scant on what specifically happened to Rainbow. What we do know comes from Defense Protocol.

When faced with an imminent Chinese military threat in the Pacific, President Jack Ryan laments the loss of the organisation, stating, “I wish we still had Rainbow up and running,” as the geopolitical crisis required an “international group with sanctioned autonomy”. In response to this gap in their capabilities, Director of National Intelligence Mary Pat Foley proposes standing up a new joint international task force “modeled after Rainbow”. 

John Clark is invited out of his so called private-sector retirement (he’s actually heading up deniable ops at the Campus) to lead this new unit, which is designated Task Force 99. Clark and Chavez accept the mission, recognizing that returning to the “Rainbow model” is the best way to secure vital trust and support from the intelligence organisations of partner nations.

Sadly, this is a rather fumbled end for Rainbow and, along with Task Force 99 more generally, is one of my biggest gripes with Andrews & Wilson’s contribution to the series. I give them very high praise for a lot, including a brilliant sequel to The Hunt for Red October in Act of Defiance, as well as raising the profile of Katie and Kyle Ryan.

But Rainbow simply deserved more than to be quietly and unceremoniously scuttled, especially in favor of a task force that just didn’t make sense, and continues to not make sense. I understand that a more gray organization might have been needed than the Campus, and one which had the international partnerships that allowed them to navigate tricky international situations with greater ease. But that organisation was Rainbow. Not Task Force 99, especially when having Clark and Chavez in both the Campus and Task Force 99 just wasn’t feasible.

In my opinion, an opportunity was sadly lost to do a sequel to Rainbow Six that gave Rainbow the send off it truly deserved. In the present timeline, that now seems unlikely as President Ryan has clearly stated they are no longer up and running. I wonder, however, whether there’s still a possibility of going back earlier in the timeline and covering how exactly they ceased to exist.

I’d love to hear your ideas on the concept title, Rainbow Down, as well as who you think would be the perfect author to do this book justice.