Night School

Night School by Lee Child, set in the late 1990s, takes Jack Reacher back to his active-duty military years as a U.S. Army Military Police major.

At Fort Belvoir, Virginia, Reacher receives his second Legion of Merit for classified work in the Balkans. That same day, General Garber sends him to a leased facility in McLean, Virginia, under cover of a dull interagency course. There he finds Casey Waterman, an experienced FBI agent, and John White, a CIA analyst. All three are fresh off major successes and were sent away with witnesses present to seed the cover story, rendering them invisible.

National Security Adviser Alfred Ratcliffe arrives with his senior deputy, Dr. Marian Sinclair, and describes a CIA-run safe house in Hamburg, Germany. Four young men, three Saudis and one Iranian double agent, pose as secular playboys while serving as a sleeper cell for a jihadist organization. Through conversations overheard by the Iranian, the team learns a courier met an unknown American in Hamburg who demanded $100 million for something unspecified. Sinclair establishes strict rules: The Iranian must never be compromised, and the team must report only to Sinclair, Ratcliffe, or the president, since the seller could be anyone in government.

Reacher reconnects with Sergeant Frances Neagley, his former top sergeant, who deduced his location and joins the team. They cross-reference nearly 200,000 Americans who were in Germany on the day of the rendezvous against military records and passport data. In Hamburg, the American seller visits a prostitute, boasts about buying a ranch in Argentina, and strangles her to eliminate a potential witness.

Reacher and Neagley fly to Hamburg to survey the safe house neighborhood but find too many possible rendezvous sites. They encounter neo-Nazi skinheads outside a bar, and Reacher fights four of them. They are recalled to McLean when Ratcliffe introduces a new theory: a malicious Y2K software patch created by one of 200 American programmers at a recent Hamburg convention. Ratcliffe sends them back to Hamburg with passport photos. Chief of Detectives Griezman, a cooperative local police official, introduces them to the eyewitness: Helmut Klopp, a meticulous municipal worker with xenophobic views. Klopp examines all 200 photographs and identifies none.

Reacher insists on staying in Hamburg, arguing that even a slim chance of the second rendezvous occurring there is better than zero. White learns that a police report documents a witness who saw an American talking to a dark-skinned man at a bar on the day and time of the rendezvous. The bar is a far-right political hangout and underground marketplace. Sinclair flies to Hamburg. Reacher calls in Manuel Orozco, a former colleague from the 110th MP unit stationed in Germany, to investigate the bar.

While getting a haircut, Reacher notices a style chart and makes a crucial connection: A soldier with a Mohawk who lets it grow out for four months develops hair that is normal on the sides but longer on top, exactly matching Klopp's description. Neagley's research flags a four-month AWOL (absent without leave) case: Private First Class Horace Wiley from Sugar Land, Texas. When Wiley's personnel file arrives, his photograph matches the police sketch perfectly.

Meanwhile, the jihadist leaders in Afghanistan agree to pay the full $100 million, and the original courier is killed to protect the secret. A young woman replaces him. In Hamburg, Griezman's surveillance team spots a young woman leaving the safe house building but assumes she belongs to a diplomatic family. Reacher realizes too late that the new messenger is a woman who has already met Wiley at a sex club on the Reeperbahn, Hamburg's famous nightlife strip, and delivered the message that his price is accepted. She flies out of Germany before the team can intercept her.

Reacher confirms through fingerprint evidence that Wiley murdered the prostitute. Wiley's background reveals four prior arrests for selling stolen property and repeated volunteering at a military surplus depot near Frankfurt, where he apparently found and stole something. A stolen furniture truck taken nearby matches the timeline. Meanwhile, Klopp belongs to a far-right movement led by Dremmler, a shoe importer commanding the largest neo-Nazi faction in Hamburg. Dremmler has a mole named Muller in the police traffic division, feeding him information throughout the case.

Neagley traces Wiley's "uncle" to Arnold Peter Mason, a retired Army veteran near Bremen who told young Wiley stories about something called the Davy Crockett. Sinclair flies in Major General Wilson T. Helmsworth, the only surviving Cold War airborne junior commander. Helmsworth reveals that in the 1950s, Livermore National Laboratory miniaturized a Hiroshima-yield nuclear warhead into a 50-pound portable cylinder nicknamed the Davy Crockett, a backpack nuclear demolition charge. One hundred were deployed in Germany, then retired and accounted for, but records suggested an eleventh crate of 10 additional bombs was manufactured and lost. Sinclair calls the president: Up to 10 loose nuclear weapons, each as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb, with full arming codes may be in an AWOL soldier's hands.

Reacher deduces that Wiley, proud of his Sugar Land roots, chose German aliases connected to Texas heritage and guesses the third is Kempner, after Isaac H. Kempner, the founder of Imperial Sugar. Griezman finds the name in city records at a waterfront apartment complex. They raid the unit but Wiley has already fled. Wiley rents a large panel van, then creates a diversion by setting a timed incendiary device in a hotel parking garage, drawing every officer in Hamburg. While the city locks down, he transfers his cargo into the van at a warehouse in the old docks. Traffic camera footage reveals he never left town.

Wiley confirms his $100 million payment from Zurich, but Dremmler's network, using information leaked by Muller, locates the warehouse. Dremmler's men stab Wiley, break his arm, and steal the van. Reacher and Neagley find Wiley bleeding to death beside the empty crate. Sinclair debriefs him before he dies. The female messenger arrives with two armed freight workers expecting to collect the van. Reacher arrests the messenger and shoots the workers when they draw weapons. From Wiley's bag, Reacher recovers the van's original key and traces the theft through Muller to Dremmler.

Reacher, Neagley, Orozco, and Orozco's sergeant Hooper infiltrate Dremmler's shoe warehouse on the Hamburg docks. They find the van behind stacked shoe boxes, but Reacher counts only nine bombs. In a glass-walled office, Dremmler sits studying the arming code file with the 10th bomb beside him. After removing the guards, Reacher confirms the bomb has not been armed and shoots Dremmler. He loads the 10th bomb into the van and drives out with Neagley. Orozco extracts the Iranian from the safe house. The messenger provides intelligence that allows White and his assistant, Vanderbilt, to drain the jihadist organization's accounts, recovering $600 million.

The National Security Council disperses the participants immediately. About two months later, Reacher is called to Fort Belvoir for a medal ceremony. Sinclair invites him to dinner the night before; they spend a final night together. She tells him the operation damaged the enemy but much remains unknown. At the ceremony, Reacher, Neagley, Orozco, and Hooper receive Army Commendation Medals. Afterward, no one stops Reacher as he walks out. The rest of the day is his.