Nothing to Lose recap

Jack Reacher walks from Hope, Colorado, into the hostile company town of Despair and investigates a dead young man, a covert route carrying Iraq-war deserters toward Canada, and secret military recycling at Thurman's metal plant. Working with Hope police officer Vaughan, he learns that the plant handles battle tanks and vehicles contaminated by depleted-uranium ammunition. A large TNT purchase and a hidden container lead him to suspect that Thurman is building a radiological device intended to implicate Iran. Reacher and Vaughan escape the plant's inner compound, leaving Thurman and two workers locked inside. Vaughan calls the phone believed to be the detonator, destroying the plant, its residential compound, and the suspected bomb. The three trapped men apparently die. The contaminated site is permanently restricted, Despair is displaced, Vaughan remains with her disabled husband David, and Reacher leaves Hope heading south.

Previously: Jack Reacher is a travelling former soldier and military policeman.

A starving, dehydrated young man collapses in the sand, with his identity and fate unknown. Elsewhere, Jack Reacher is crossing the United States from Maine toward California when he reaches Hope, Colorado. The name of the neighbouring town, Despair, catches his attention, so he changes course and walks the seventeen miles west. The connecting road has no traffic, an early sign that movement between the towns is unusual. In Despair, a gas-station clerk refuses to sell him anything except fuel and directs him to the only restaurant. There, the waitress and customers deliberately ignore him even though the establishment is open. Reacher seats himself and waits. Four men soon enter together, surround his table, and block his exit. Their coordinated arrival confirms that the town regards an unfamiliar visitor as a problem, but their exact purpose has not yet been stated.

Reacher's inquiries expose Despair as a company town controlled by Thurman, who is its mayor and metal-plant owner. Gardner, the local judge and Thurman's lawyer, mobilizes residents to exclude Reacher. Hope police officer Vaughan nevertheless helps him investigate unexplained night flights, missing young men, and a guarded section inside the plant. Maria arrives from San Diego looking for her boyfriend Rafael Ramirez, whose photograph may match a dead man Reacher encountered, although the identification remains uncertain. No body has reached the county morgue through normal channels. After Maria heads toward Despair and disappears, hundreds of armed residents force Reacher and Vaughan to retreat. Reacher returns alone and finds a police ledger that records Lucy Anderson as a vagrant and includes a new entry for G. Rogers, while Ramirez and other missing people are absent. Vaughan also confirms that David Robert Vaughan is her husband but withholds his location. With the residents guarding the town and Maria still missing, Reacher burns the empty police station as a diversion and drives a deputy's truck toward Thurman's plant.

Inside Thurman's operation, Reacher finds senior deputy Underwood gravely ill from a cause unrelated to their earlier fight. Maria returns after being detained by military police, but cannot explain the problem involving Ramirez. Vaughan takes Reacher to her husband David, a permanently nonresponsive Iraq-war veteran living in a neglected traumatic-brain-injury facility. Reacher forces staff to begin improving the patients' care. He and Vaughan then identify several overlapping secrets in Despair. The plant processes combat wreckage under a military contract, while selected young men appear to be hidden through a separate operation. Thurman also owns the company running David's facility. Reacher and Vaughan find Underwood dead, records of years of chemical purchases, damaged vehicles with Arabic-script plates, and a recent order for twenty tons of TNT. An Ontario truck shows the same uneven heat pattern as the plant's concealed area. Thurman claims his nightly flights deliver human ash recovered from wreckage to the Army. He proves the delivery at Fort Shaw, then abandons Reacher in Oklahoma. Reacher starts back toward Hope and learns that Vaughan cannot be reached.

Reacher returns and determines that Thurman's plant dismantles main battle tanks whose depleted-uranium armour has contaminated workers and foreign vehicles. The military is guarding a stockpile awaiting eventual removal. He also concludes that Rogers and other Iraq-war deserters are being carried through Despair toward Canada. Rafael Ramirez was a Marine who went absent before a third deployment; Reacher believes he was recruited to work against that route and died before returning to Maria. The TNT, radioactive material, and Iranian vehicle fragments lead Reacher to suspect a bomb designed to blame Iran and provoke a wider war, although the intended target and outside support remain unproved. In the hidden compound, Reacher and Vaughan find wrecked tanks and a welded shipping container. They escape after Reacher defeats two plant workers and locks them inside with Thurman. Four linked phones identify Thurman's inner circle, leaving one unanswered phone as the apparent detonator. Vaughan calls it. The explosion destroys the plant, residential compound, and suspected device, apparently killing the three trapped men. The contaminated site is permanently sealed, displacing Despair. Vaughan remains responsible for David's care, while Reacher leaves Hope heading south.

Reacher and Vaughan enter the hidden section of Thurman Metals and find wrecked battle tanks and a shipping container welded to its trailer. Thurman's explanation that the container carries aid cannot account for the linked cell phones or the plant's TNT and depleted-uranium stockpile. Reacher defeats the foreman and the large worker, escapes with Vaughan, and locks both men and Thurman inside the inner compound. Vaughan calls the one phone that has not answered, believing it is connected to the detonator. The resulting explosion destroys the metal plant and Thurman's residential compound, apparently killing all three trapped men and eliminating the suspected radiological device. Authorities impose radiation controls, publicly describe the event as an industrial accident, and prepare to fence the site permanently. Despair faces evacuation and the loss of its economic base. The route moving Iraq-war deserters toward Canada remains beyond the immediate resolution, as does the extent of any outside involvement in Thurman's plan. Vaughan resumes responsibility for David Robert Vaughan's care and stays in Hope. Her temporary partnership with Reacher ends when he departs alone, heading south.