Die Trying

This is the second book in the Jack Reacher series.

An orthodontist named Dr. Nathan Rubin is ambushed in his Chicago parking garage by three men. They beat him, abduct him, and steal his new black Lexus sedan. Elsewhere in the city, Jack Reacher, a drifter and former Army Military Police officer, helps Holly Johnson, an attractive young woman with a leg injury who is struggling on a crutch outside a dry cleaner's. As Reacher assists her, two men accost them at gunpoint while a third waits in the stolen Lexus. Reacher considers fighting back but decides against it because of the crowded street and Holly's injury.

Forced into the car, they are driven to an abandoned industrial lot five miles south of the city. There, Reacher notices a recently discarded paint can and brush near a dirty white Ford Econoline panel truck, which has a freshly painted patch on its side. Reacher and Holly are handcuffed together and forced into the back of the truck. As the doors close, Reacher sees the driver dousing the Lexus with gasoline and preparing to set it on fire.

Inside the hot, dark van, Reacher and Holly introduce themselves. Reacher quickly deduces that Holly is a new, wealthy, and dedicated government agent who was the specific target of a well-planned kidnapping. Holly confirms she is an FBI special agent who recently injured her knee playing soccer. She tells Reacher it will be hours before anyone at her office realizes she is missing. Meanwhile, at a remote compound 1,702 miles away, a huge, bloated man named Beau Borken oversees the construction of a special prison room and murders the two construction workers. Back in Chicago, Holly's colleagues at the FBI Field Office, including her assistant Milosevic, her section head Brogan, and the Agent-in-Charge, McGrath, grow concerned when she fails to show up for a 5 p.m. meeting. The news reaches FBI Director Harland Webster in Washington, D.C., who informs the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Johnson, that his daughter, Holly, is missing.

After a six-hour drive, the van stops at a rural cow barn. The kidnappers, led by a man named Loder, separate Reacher and Holly, chaining them to stall railings. Loder interrogates Reacher, who maintains his cover story of being an innocent doorman. After the kidnappers leave to refuel the truck, Reacher uses a bent fork prong to pick the locks on his and Holly's handcuffs. He discovers an escape route through a ventilation slot at the top of the barn wall but realizes Holly cannot make the climb. He rejects her order to escape alone and re-chains them both before the kidnappers return.

The next morning, Reacher de-escalates a tense situation by demanding breakfast and mattresses, establishing a degree of psychological control. During the next leg of the journey, Holly notices a large, crudely stitched scar on Reacher's stomach and correctly identifies him as ex-military. He admits he was a Major in the Military Police. Holly then reveals her father is General Johnson, confirming for Reacher that her kidnapping is a high-stakes operation. In Chicago, the FBI obtains security footage of the kidnapping, which allows them to trace the getaway car to its murdered owner, Nathan Rubin.

In the truck, Reacher forces another stop to confront Loder, during which one of the kidnappers fires a shotgun into the roof, creating over a hundred holes. The truck stops for a second night at an old horse farm. Late that night, the driver, Peter Wayne Bell, returns alone to rape Holly. Reacher, in a burst of adrenaline, tears his iron ring anchor from the wooden wall, breaks free, and kills Bell by suffocating him. He then hides Bell's body in a ditch over a mile away and cleverly reattaches his broken chain to the wall to conceal his escape.

The next morning, Loder and his subordinate, Stevie, assume Bell has deserted. Enraged, Stevie fires the shotgun at Reacher, destroying the wall and freeing him. Holly convinces them not to kill Reacher, and they are all forced back into the truck. After an initial search for the white truck leads to a misdirection in Arizona, the FBI discovers Bell's body in North Dakota. Brogan then analyzes evidence from the kidnappers' first abandoned truck and deduces they belong to a militia in Montana led by Beau Borken and are heading there. The truck arrives at the Montana Militia compound, a remote settlement in the mountains near Yorke. Holly is taken to the specially constructed prison room, and Reacher is chained to a tree. He is interrogated by Borken's chief-of-staff, Dell Fowler, and then brought before the commander, Beau Borken, a charismatic and psychopathic giant.

An undercover FBI agent named Jackson contacts Holly in her room and plans an escape. He has already reported to the FBI that the walls of her room are packed with a ton of dynamite, turning her prison into a bomb. Borken puts Loder on a sham trial for incompetence and publicly executes him. He initially decides to use Reacher as an "emissary" to the government. During a brief walk, Reacher and Holly deduce there is a mole in the Chicago FBI office, and she tells him about Jackson. On the parade ground, Holly threatens suicide with a submachine gun, forcing Borken to commute Reacher's death sentence. To prove his identity as a former Army marksman, Reacher deliberately misses the official target and instead shoots a "B" into a tree a thousand yards away. After learning Reacher killed Bell, Borken cancels the emissary mission. Reacher and Holly are sent to bury the crucified and mutilated body of Jackson, who has been discovered and killed. Afterward, they make love in the forest. Reacher's questions lead Holly to conclude the mole must be either Brogan or Milosevic.

Reacher is locked in a punishment hut but tricks his guard, Joseph Ray, into letting him go. He learns from a dissident woman that Borken plans a mass suicide for his followers on July 4th, the day he will declare independence. Reacher investigates the abandoned mines above the compound, where he discovers stolen trucks, Stinger missiles, and the bodies of a missing Army missile unit. He becomes trapped in a narrow tunnel but escapes. He then frees Holly, and they use the militia's communication hut to fax a warning about the missiles to the Chicago FBI office before sabotaging the radio. They are caught by Borken and Stevie.

The FBI team, now led by Webster and General Johnson from a mobile command post south of the compound, intercepts the fax. Political concerns from the White House delay a full-scale response. A search-and-rescue helicopter is dispatched to find the missile unit. A militiaman fires a Stinger missile; Reacher kills the shooter as he fires, but the missile launches and destroys the helicopter. Borken uses Jackson's radio to contact Webster, threatening Holly. McGrath, realizing they have been betrayed by a mole, infiltrates the compound with Brogan and Milosevic. In the command hut, Reacher kills Dell Fowler. He then rescues McGrath, who was being prepared for torture. They realize Brogan is the traitor, and McGrath kills him. Reacher has a crucial realization: the entire siege is a decoy. He has sent Stevie on a suicide mission with the dynamite-laden white truck to bomb a Federal Reserve branch. Holly is taken hostage by Milosevic, who is revealed to be a mole working for Brogan, but she kills him with a shard of tile just as Reacher and the FBI team arrive.

The team commandeers a Marine Corps helicopter to pursue the truck bomb. Reacher deduces the target is the San Francisco Federal Reserve branch, the focus of Borken's conspiracy theories. They spot the truck, now painted green, on a highway in Idaho. Because the military pilot is barred from firing, Reacher opens the helicopter door and, using a sniper rifle from 200 feet in the air, shoots the truck, detonating the bomb harmlessly in the empty landscape. An inspection of Holly's room reveals the dynamite was secretly removed for the truck bomb, confirming the decoy plan. On the highway shoulder, Reacher and Holly say their goodbyes, and he learns she is in love with McGrath. After Holly and the others depart, Reacher begins hitchhiking. Days later, he arrives in Wisconsin, continuing his solitary journey. In Chicago, Holly moves in with McGrath.