When Reacher points out that the military has no authority to investigate him due to his civilian status, Morgan reinstates him as an officer and gives him a room at a local motel, where the fight occurs later that night.

Police from the 75th MP, led by Warrant Officer Pete Espin, later take him into custody and bring him to the same prison where Turner is held.

The two find her car and leave, but are intercepted by Metro police and end up ditching their ride and fleeing to Berryville, where Reacher informs Turner that her men in Afghanistan were assassinated, and that the charges against her were invented to cover up some sort of illegal activity.

Turner says the mission in Afghanistan was linked to a Pashtun elder, later identified as Emal Zadran, and theorizes that Morgan, the strange men, and some higher-ups in the army's chain of command (who are using the pseudonyms Romeo and Juliet) are working together to protect him.

They track down Samantha, but Espin later confirms that the paternity claim is bogus as he found that someone named Romeo had secured a falsified birth certificate from a crooked LA lawyer and had Candice sign it for $100.

Through Edmonds, Reacher and Turner learn that an illicit operation was being run through Fort Bragg army base in North Carolina under the control of Crew Scully and Gabriel Montague, both Deputy Chiefs of Staff, involving the smuggling of contraband using empty ordnance crates.

Morgan and Shrago reveal that Zadran had been supplying their bosses with opium, and Turner's name is cleared, allowing her to resume command.

Janet Maslin, writing in The New York Times, stated that the book "may be the best desert island reading in the series.