Carol Brightling
Dr. Carol Brightling is a character that appears in Rainbow Six. She serves as the Science Advisor to the President and is the ex-wife of John Brightling.
Biography
Carol is an environmental activist who met and later married John Brightling. She earned doctorates from Harvard, Cal-Tech, and the University of Illinois. Due to the growing threat of environmental pollution, Carol proposed "The Project" which called for the development and release of a deadly virus to cause a mass extinction. The pair believed that after the pandemic, they could then rebuild the world in their image, free of pollution.
John and Carol founded the Horizon Corporation which specialized in developing cancer drugs and synthetic antibiotics. Secretly, the company was founded a front for clandestine biological warfare experiments to make their dream a reality. In the late 1980s, Carol decided to purse a political career in order to further her environmental agenda and help the Horizon Corporation from behind the scenes. John and Carol agreed to divorce one another in order to distance themselves in the public eye. Unfortunately for Carol, she chose not keep any of her Horizon shares which she later regretted.
In the late 1990s, Horizon scientists succeeded in mutating a strain of the Ebola virus, known as the Shiva virus. With human trials of the virus ongoing, John tasked Dimitriy Popov to orchestrate several terrorist attacks across the globe to raise the awareness of terrorism. This would subsequently help Global Security land a security contract for the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia where virus would be distributed. In 1999, Carol became the Science Advisor for President Jack Ryan with the help of Chief of Staff Arnold van Damm who had wanted the President to have qualified supporter of the environmental movement in his administration. Despite this, Ryan did not share her belief and regularly dismissed her advice. However, her new position gave her access to biological warfare secrets which she passed on to Horizon to help find a way to distribute the virus.
Rainbow Six
Carol Brightling attended a semiofficial dinner hosted by the Society of Cincinnatus to get a better understanding of how the capital's society worked. She spoke with a junior senator from Illinois and complained that the President Ryan was not supporting her on Global Warming. She then noticed her ex-husband John Brightling and informed the senator that the "reason" they had divorced was that she did not agree with Horizon's genetic engineering and that it went against nature.
A few weeks later following Rainbow's successful resolution of the hostage situation in Vienna, Austria, Carol asked the Secretary of the Treasury, George Winston, who had performed the operation. Winston lied to Carol, claiming it was the local police. Unconvinced, Carol asked the Secretary of the Interior why it was such a big deal. The Secretary told her it wasn't but, like Carol, was suspicious that Winston knew more than he was letting on.
Carol later had a meeting with the President of the Sierra Club, Kevin Mayflower over a bill to expand the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. Mayflower urged Carol to advice President Ryan to veto the bill due to the adverse consequences it would cause the environment. Carol agreed but pointed out that the President would most likely ignore her advice. Her assumption proved correct when she requested a meeting with Ryan through White House Chief of Staff Arnold van Damm. Damm refused her request, stating that the expansion would save the country millions of dollars and that the president of Atlantic Richfield promised him the operation would have minimal impact to the environment. Brightling grew angry and continued to argue, revealing her promise to Mayflower to stop the bill. Damm responded by saying that the Sierra Club was made up of extremists and threatened to fire Brightling if she did not publicly support the bill. A reluctant Brightling complied with his order and stormed out of his office after Damm requested she send him her statement on the matter to be released the following week.
Later, Carol had another meeting with Mayflower at a restaurant to discuss what had transpired with Damm. The pair continued to speak about environmental issues plaguing the world before Mayflower came to the conclusion that the only way to restore the Earth would be start over. This prompted Brightling to recruit him into "the Project". Carol then left to attend the White House weekly cabinet meeting.
Following the successful resolution of the hostage situation at World Park, Dimitriy Popov discovered that the rescue team had been the same team that had stopped the terrorists at Bern and Vienna. After Popov shared this information with John Brightling, John asked Carol to ask around for more information about the team. She did this by first asking the Secretary of the Treasury, George Winston, who had performed the job. Due to her clearance and right to know, Winston revealed Rainbow's existence to Carol. Carol suggested to Winston that she should be briefed more about them so that she can provide help but was told by Winston that she would need to ask President Ryan in order to be let in on the briefings. Carol knew this would never happen as she was not in Ryan's good favor. To gather more information, Carol called CIA Director Ed Foley. Using the information she was given by Winston, she tricked Foley into believing that she was fully informed about Rainbow which led him to reveal its leader to be John Clark.
Carol brought this information to John Brightling who shared it with Dimitriy Popov and Bill Henriksen. John then formulated a plan to have Popov orchestrate an attack on Rainbow itself in order to dissuade them from interfering at the Summer Olympics in Austrailia where they were planning on unleashing the Shiva virus.
Trivia
- She is briefly mentioned in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six but does not make an appearance. Instead, her role is fulfilled by Anne Lang.
- Despite her position within the White House, she commutes with her own car, a fuel-efficient Honda, without a bodyguard.
- Her apartment is located off Wisconson Avenue in Georgetown and was given to her as part of her appointment as Science Advisor to the President.
- Carol owns a calico cat named Jiggs.