The year 1990. Military policeman Jack Reacher unexpectedly transferred from Panama, where he participated in the operation to capture dictator Noriega, in the silence of the office of the American military base in North Carolina. Reacher is frankly washed out of idleness, until on New Year's Eve he receives a message that a dead general has been found in a local motel. Death from a heart attack prevented him from carrying out some top secret mission. When Reacher arrives at the general's house to inform his wife of the tragedy, he discovers that the woman has been killed. The general's briefcase has disappeared, and Richer suspects that it was the papers contained in it that caused the murder.