Night School

Jack Reacher is still an army man in 1996, and the day starts with a medal pinned to his chest. By afternoon he has been ordered back to a classroom, and by nightfall he has dropped off the official map. Two other men sit in that room with him: an FBI agent and a CIA analyst. Both are highly capable, both have just come off a major success, and neither can work out why he has been pulled aside.

The reason is a message picked up in Hamburg. A jihadist sleeper cell there has taken in a Saudi courier who needs a place to hide until he can meet contacts nobody has identified. A CIA asset embedded in the cell hears the courier murmur a line that chills everyone who learns of it: the American wants a hundred million dollars. Nobody knows what is being sold, or who is buying it.

Reacher and his two reluctant colleagues are given the job of finding that American. Reacher brings in Sergeant Frances Neagley, the best soldier he has ever served beside, and together they chase a trail that runs through Langley, Hamburg, Jalalabad and Kiev. The pressure climbs steadily, because failure means a terrorist attack on a catastrophic scale.

This is a Reacher prequel built on forged identities, betrayals and enemies he has never met, with Reacher working inside the system while bending its rules to get the job done.