When the President, fearing political fallout from a bloodbath, refuses to authorize an attack, McGrath and his men go rogue, setting up camp near the community. Meanwhile, the FBI figures out where the militia is. Learning that he'll be executed, Holly escapes her room and convinces Borken to commute his sentence after he proves his worth in a shooting match.ĭuring the punishment, Reacher and Holly are forced to bury the caught Jackson's corpse, and Reacher suspects something big is about to happen. However, word soon reaches Borken of Bell's murder, and Reacher is put on trial. Meanwhile, Reacher, after witnessing Borken execute Loder, the leader of the kidnappers, for multiple failures, is shown around the camp with the intent of sending him back to the States with information on the militia's credibility.

She meets Jackson, an FBI agent working undercover, who offers to help her escape, but she refuses to leave without Reacher. Holly, intended by leader Beau Borken to be used as leverage to make her father agree to his demands, is placed in an upstairs room of an abandoned county courthouse, whose walls are supposedly filled with dynamite. Reacher and Holly finally arrive at their destination a mountain community that's home to a radical military sect wishing to secede from the US. Holly finally and reluctantly accepts his help after this. Reacher breaks free of his restraints, kills Bell, hides his body, and re-restrains himself before the others become suspicious. However, she ends up owing him when, during another stay, one of the kidnappers, Peter Bell, tries to rape her.

At one point, they manage to put an APB out on the van, but get the wrong van due to a transfer of vehicles.Īfter Reacher fails to take advantage of an opportunity to escape during the night, Holly insists that he let her handle things. The Chicago office where Holly worked take charge, with only agent in charge McGrath and two others, Milosevic and Brogan involved. Security footage leaves Reacher as the prime suspect, and his mentor, General Leon Garber, is brought in to help, though he insists Reacher would never do such a thing. Meanwhile, Holly's fellow agents search for her. On the way, Reacher learns the woman is an FBI agent named Holly Johnson, though she doesn't tell him she's the daughter of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and goddaughter of the President, having been accused of being the beneficiary of nepotism all her life. While in Chicago, former military police officer Jack Reacher is helping a young woman with an injured leg with her dry cleaning when they're captured at gunpoint by three men and thrown into a car, then transferred into a van and driven cross country. It was published in 1998 by Bantam Press in the UK and by Putnam in the US. Die Trying is the second novel in the Jack Reacher series written by Lee Child.

Without Fail by Lee Child