Reacher Episode 28: Karambits and Pieces

Reacher and Sampson begin the episode by holding a quiet, impromptu wake for the man who died in the previous episode, then Sampson finally explains the Indonesia operation and the larger cover-up surrounding it. He says he was there to escort scientists, that the torture and murders happened after he left, and that the mission involved U.S.-trained forces being used against local dissidents, with additional scientific experiments tied to the project.

While Reacher pushes for answers, Tamara sneaks into the government facility connected to Anna Merrick’s work and searches her workstation. She learns that Anna had been digitizing old State Department documents and that a deleted file remained on the drive as the only surviving copy after the paper version was destroyed. This deepens the team’s interest in what Anna was trying to hide or pass along.

The episode then turns violent when the CIA team tries to abduct Reacher again as he leaves after meeting with Sampson. Reacher is forced into a fight in a dock warehouse, where he takes on the attackers and survives the ambush. A second action sequence follows on the Philadelphia subway, where more mercenaries go after him and end up dead.

At the same time, the investigation into the murdered men and the missing drive continues to tighten around Anna, Ben, and the people connected to them. The group realizes there was supposed to be a handoff involving the USB drive, but Ben’s death changes what Anna does next. After learning Ben is dead, Anna is believed to have abandoned the original plan and to have armed herself instead.

Jacob receives the news that his nephew has been found dead. The discovery breaks him emotionally and confirms the team’s worst fears about what happened to the missing man. The episode also establishes that the body was killed with a karambit, a specific curved blade tied to the Indonesian thread running through the case.

Reacher then starts to suspect that the USB drive may have been mailed to Lila, and he moves to track it down. As he searches, he is followed by armed attackers and manages to get Lila onto a subway train while the confrontation turns deadly around him. By the end of the pursuit, one attacker is killed by Reacher and another dies accidentally, forcing him to flee.

In the final stretch, the episode reveals that Lila and Amisha are not simply passive bystanders in the case. They are shown cutting down attackers with karambits of their own, leaving a scene of multiple bodies that will later draw police attention to Reacher. The episode ends with the investigation no longer just about a missing drive or a dead source, but about a much larger and more dangerous operation with multiple active killers in play.