The hotel’s night porter denies having seen a group matching the description of Lila Hoth and her associates. Reacher leaves, and less than a minute later, Hoth calls him, confirming that the porter warned her.

Reacher negotiates a deal with Hoth: He opens at $100,000, Hoth counters at $60,000, and Reacher accepts, agreeing to reveal the memory stick’s location. He arranges to meet her alone in Union Square. Immediately after, Reacher calls Detective Lee, informing her of the meeting and explaining that Hoth will send her crew instead. He directs Lee to have her counterterrorism unit ambush them, assuring her he is certain of Hoth’s location because of the porter’s immediate tip-off.

Reacher arrives in Union Square and watches as counterterrorism officers discreetly take up positions. Their plan is disrupted when eight federal agents in two black cars arrive unexpectedly.

Reacher calls Lee, who confirms a leak within the NYPD and warns that the federal agents have jurisdiction. Soon after, seven of Hoth’s men appear. To escape both Hoth’s crew and the federal agents, Reacher flees into the subway. On the R train platform, the NYPD squad efficiently captures all seven of Hoth’s men. After the NYPD departs, Reacher finds himself trapped at the end of the platform, cornered by the eight remaining federal agents.

The lead federal agent demands the location of the memory stick and threatens to shoot Reacher. At his direction, a second agent steps forward to display credentials: They are from the DoD, acting on behalf of the President.

The arrival of an uptown R train forces the agents to hide their weapons from potential witnesses. In a brief standoff, Reacher and four of the agents step onto a train car and then immediately step back off onto the platform. As the train doors close and it begins to move, Reacher leaps onto the side of the lead car, clinging to a rain gutter and a narrow toe board, and is carried into the tunnel, escaping the agents.

After a harrowing nine-block ride on the outside of the train, Reacher enters the car at the 23rd Street station and exits at Herald Square. He returns to the hotel where he first confronted the night porter.

After threatening the porter, Reacher learns the Hoths had occupied five rooms on the eighth floor but fled minutes after his initial visit. Reacher finds the rooms empty. Recalling something Lila once said about the mujahideen doubling back to positions previously written off as abandoned, he deduces that she and her remaining crew have returned to their original hideout on 58th Street.

From a concealed position across Madison Avenue, Reacher surveils the 58th Street building and identifies a side door leading to a covered alley. Lila calls his phone, and Reacher tells her he is right outside, confirming his suspicion when he sees movement in a fourth-floor window. To stall her, he arranges a fake meeting in Times Square for the next morning.

While Hoth is still on the line, one of her men exits the alley door to scout the area. Reacher shoots and kills him with his silenced MP5, then ends the call and drags the body into the alley.

Two more of Hoth’s men enter the alley to investigate their missing comrade. Reacher ambushes and kills them both with his MP5. He enters the building through an inner door, finding himself in the abandoned restaurant kitchen where he recognizes the stone table used in Peter Molina’s murder video.

After moving through the empty dining room, he finds the stairwell leading to the upper floors and prepares to ascend.

Reacher stealthily climbs to the second floor. To scout the building’s layout, he enters a vacant, partially demolished apartment. From there, he climbs out onto the fire escape and ascends past the third and fourth floors, noting their windows are covered with drapes. He continues to the fifth floor, where he climbs over the cornice and onto the roof. He locates a trapdoor positioned directly above the stairwell, planning to break in and attack from the high ground.

Reacher rips the trapdoor open, but the hasp and padlock fall noisily to the floor below, alerting the building’s occupants. When one of Hoth’s men comes up the stairs to investigate, Reacher shoots and kills him before vaulting through the trapdoor and landing next to the body. He exchanges fire through the floorboards with someone on the fourth floor. When another operative tries to sneak up the stairs, Reacher kills him as well. Anticipating that his opponents will try to outflank him, Reacher correctly predicts that the last man will be sent up the fire escape. Reacher sets an ambush in a fifth-floor room for the man ascending the fire escape. His initial burst of fire only grazes the man’s ear. Reacher pursues him out onto the fire escape and kills him on the fourth-floor landing.

Entering the fourth-floor apartment, he finds Lila and Svetlana Hoth waiting. Reacher has one round left in the MP5 plus nine loose rounds in his pocket. His phone rings; it is Lee, who warns him that there are actually 20 men in the terror cell. At that moment, the previously unknown 20th man steps out of the bathroom.

With his last loaded bullet, Reacher drops the phone and shoots the 20th man in the head. Lila immediately retrieves the dead man’s silenced pistol and holds Reacher at gunpoint.

Svetlana correctly deduces that Reacher’s MP5 is now empty, having found and displayed the nine loose rounds from his jacket pocket. Svetlana orders for Reacher to be stripped to his boxer shorts. Lila then discards the pistol. She and Svetlana produce long butcher’s knives, preparing to kill Reacher. In response, Reacher reveals a Benchmade folding knife that he had duct-taped to the small of his back.

Reacher engages both women in a brutal knife fight. He slashes Svetlana’s forehead, temporarily blinding her with her own blood. Lila manages to cut Reacher across the stomach, but the wound’s severity is lessened by an old wartime shrapnel scar. Reacher retaliates, slashing Lila’s thigh and breaking her nose with his fist. He then kills Svetlana by stabbing her in the kidney and cutting her throat. Finally, he uses a chair to disarm the dazed and injured Lila before strangling her to death. After using duct tape to apply makeshift closures to his wound, Reacher collapses from blood loss.

Reacher awakens in a hospital ten hours later, where he is met by Lee, Jake, Springfield, and Sansom. He learns that the Department of Defense is covering up the nine deaths at the 58th Street building; the official story of Reacher’s injury is a drug deal gone wrong.

Reacher explains his theory that Susan was driving down I-95 on her way to save Peter when she received proof that he was tortured and killed. She threw both the memory stick and her cell phone onto the side into the median, which is where both devices likely remain. Susan then resolved to avenge Peter, but when Reacher approached her, she decided to resign her quest.

A day later, Lee confirms the items were found, but the memory stick was conveniently crushed and declared unreadable. After his wound heals, Reacher leaves New York.