Together with the bus driver, Jay Knox, and the local deputy chief of police, Andrew Peterson, Reacher helps the elderly tourists get to safety in the nearby town of Bolton.

The local police cannot get probable cause to search the complex without the testimony of a retired librarian, Janet Salter, the only person willing to testify that she saw a drug deal take place in Bolton.

Peterson and the chief of police, Tom Holland, know that if the prison siren rings, the officers guarding Mrs. Salter will have to leave, making her easy prey for the drug dealers.

Reacher travels to the military compound and finds no evidence of a methamphetamine lab, only a small stone building surrounded by barracks huts whose residents are about to move out.

Turner finds out that forty tons of surplus materiel from World War II are being stored in tunnels accessed under the small stone building, but cannot figure out the exact contents.

Based on the complex's pristine condition, Reacher guesses that its owner, a four foot 11 inches tall Latin American drug lord and pawn shop baron named Plato, is getting ready to sell it, but the sale would be compromised by Mrs. Salter being alive to testify.

A local lawyer who relayed instructions in and out of the Bolton prison is found shot dead in his car, telling Reacher and the police that Plato's hit man has arrived in town.

He tells Turner that the dent in the desk came from when he nearly killed a one-star general who had stolen food supplies meant for Reacher and other troops stationed in Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War.

Plato and a crew of henchmen fly to the abandoned airfield on his private Boeing 737, intending to pack it full of his loot and methamphetamine before selling the base to a Russian gangster.

In Virginia, Turner watches news reports of a massive explosion at an Air Force facility outside Bolton, South Dakota, giving off fumes containing some kind of stimulant.