It wasn't the welcome Reacher expected. He was just passing through, minding his own business. But within minutes of his arrival a deputy is in the hospital and Reacher is back in Hope, setting up a base of operations against Despair, where a huge, seething walled-off industrial site does something nobody is supposed to see ... where a small plane takes off every night and returns seven hours later ... where a garrison of well-trained and well-armed military cops --the kind of soldiers Reacher once commanded--waits and watches ... where above all two young men have disappeared and two frightened young women wait and hope for their return. Joining forces with a beautiful cop who runs Hope with a cool hand, Reacher goes up against Despair--against the deputies who try to break him and the rich man who tries to scare him--and starts to crack open the secrets, starts to expose the terrifying connection to a distant war that's killing Americans by the thousand.