Read Rainbow Six (1997) for Free Online Page A
Authors: Tom - Jack Ryan 09 Clancy
it?”
“Quite,” Alistair confirmed, with a sleepy grunt.
Just then the rain started, making for a proper welcome to British soil. It was a hundred-yard walk to the reception building, where a British official stamped their passports and officially welcomed them to his country before going back to his breakfast tea and newspaper.
Three cars waited outside, all of them black Daimler limousines, which headed off the base, then west, and south for Hereford. This was proof that he was a civilian bureaucrat, Clark told himself in the lead car. Otherwise they’d have used helicopters. But Britain wasn’t entirely devoid of civilization. They stopped at a roadside McDonald’s for Egg McMuffins and coffee. Sandy snorted at the cholesterol intake. She’d been chiding John about it for months. Then she thought about the previous night.
“John?”
“Yes, honey?”
“Who were they?”
“Who, the guys on the airplane?” He looked over and got a nod. “Not sure, probably Basque separatists. It looked like they were after the Spanish ambassador, but they screwed up big-time. He wasn’t aboard, just his wife.”
“They were trying to hijack the airplane?”
“Yep, they sure were.”
“Isn’t that scary?”
John nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, it is. Well, would have been scarier if they were competent, but they weren’t.” An inner smile. Boy, did they ever pick the wrong flight! But he couldn’t laugh about it now, not with his wife sitting next to him, on the wrong side of the road—a fact that had him looking up in some irritation. It felt very wrong to be on the left side of the road, driving along at . . . eighty miles per hour? Damn. Didn’t they have speed limits here?
“What’ll happen to them?” Sandy persisted.
“There’s an international treaty. The Canadians will ship them back to the States for trial—Federal Court. They’ll be tried, convicted, and imprisoned for air piracy. They’ll be behind bars for a long time.” And they were lucky at that, Clark didn’t add. Spain might well have been a little more unpleasant about it.
“First time in a long time something like that happened.”
“Yep.” Her husband agreed. You had to be a real dolt to hijack airplanes, but dolts, it appeared, were not yet an endangered species. That was why he was the Six of an organization called Rainbow.
There is good news and there is bad news, the memo he’d written had begun. As usual, it wasn’t couched in bureaucratese; it was a language Clark had never quite learned despite his thirty years in CIA.
With the demise of the Soviet Union and other nation states with political positions adverse to American and Western interests, the likelihood of a major international confrontation is at an all-time low. This, clearly, is the best of good news.
But along with that we must face the fact that there remain many experienced and trained international terrorists still roaming the world, some with lingering contacts with national intelligence agencies—plus the fact that some nations, while not desirous of a direct confrontation with American or other Western nations, could still make use of the remaining terrorist “free agents” for more narrow political goals.
If anything, this problem is very likely to grow, since under the previous world situation, the major nation states placed firm limits on terrorist activity—these limits enforced by controlled access to weapons, funding, training, and safe-havens.
It seems likely that the current world situation will invert the previous “understanding” enjoyed by the major countries. The price of support, weapons, training, and safe-havens might well become actual terrorist activity, not the ideological purity previously demanded by sponsoring nation states.
The most obvious solution to this—probably—increasing problem will be a new multinational counterterrorist team. I propose the code name Rainbow. I further propose that the organization
“Quite,” Alistair confirmed, with a sleepy grunt.
Just then the rain started, making for a proper welcome to British soil. It was a hundred-yard walk to the reception building, where a British official stamped their passports and officially welcomed them to his country before going back to his breakfast tea and newspaper.
Three cars waited outside, all of them black Daimler limousines, which headed off the base, then west, and south for Hereford. This was proof that he was a civilian bureaucrat, Clark told himself in the lead car. Otherwise they’d have used helicopters. But Britain wasn’t entirely devoid of civilization. They stopped at a roadside McDonald’s for Egg McMuffins and coffee. Sandy snorted at the cholesterol intake. She’d been chiding John about it for months. Then she thought about the previous night.
“John?”
“Yes, honey?”
“Who were they?”
“Who, the guys on the airplane?” He looked over and got a nod. “Not sure, probably Basque separatists. It looked like they were after the Spanish ambassador, but they screwed up big-time. He wasn’t aboard, just his wife.”
“They were trying to hijack the airplane?”
“Yep, they sure were.”
“Isn’t that scary?”
John nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, it is. Well, would have been scarier if they were competent, but they weren’t.” An inner smile. Boy, did they ever pick the wrong flight! But he couldn’t laugh about it now, not with his wife sitting next to him, on the wrong side of the road—a fact that had him looking up in some irritation. It felt very wrong to be on the left side of the road, driving along at . . . eighty miles per hour? Damn. Didn’t they have speed limits here?
“What’ll happen to them?” Sandy persisted.
“There’s an international treaty. The Canadians will ship them back to the States for trial—Federal Court. They’ll be tried, convicted, and imprisoned for air piracy. They’ll be behind bars for a long time.” And they were lucky at that, Clark didn’t add. Spain might well have been a little more unpleasant about it.
“First time in a long time something like that happened.”
“Yep.” Her husband agreed. You had to be a real dolt to hijack airplanes, but dolts, it appeared, were not yet an endangered species. That was why he was the Six of an organization called Rainbow.
There is good news and there is bad news, the memo he’d written had begun. As usual, it wasn’t couched in bureaucratese; it was a language Clark had never quite learned despite his thirty years in CIA.
With the demise of the Soviet Union and other nation states with political positions adverse to American and Western interests, the likelihood of a major international confrontation is at an all-time low. This, clearly, is the best of good news.
But along with that we must face the fact that there remain many experienced and trained international terrorists still roaming the world, some with lingering contacts with national intelligence agencies—plus the fact that some nations, while not desirous of a direct confrontation with American or other Western nations, could still make use of the remaining terrorist “free agents” for more narrow political goals.
If anything, this problem is very likely to grow, since under the previous world situation, the major nation states placed firm limits on terrorist activity—these limits enforced by controlled access to weapons, funding, training, and safe-havens.
It seems likely that the current world situation will invert the previous “understanding” enjoyed by the major countries. The price of support, weapons, training, and safe-havens might well become actual terrorist activity, not the ideological purity previously demanded by sponsoring nation states.
The most obvious solution to this—probably—increasing problem will be a new multinational counterterrorist team. I propose the code name Rainbow. I further propose that the organization