Chapter 961 The truth comes out

When Jack and Reacher returned to New York, Hannah and Jiejie had already brought Marlo Burns and her daughter back to the Most Wanted Criminals office building.

The mother and daughter did not run too far, but hid in Newburgh, more than 70 kilometers north of New York, upstream of the Hudson River.

Lanston and his men don't seem to have such omnipotent powers. They only rely on some relationships that were left over from within the NYPD.

Now, with the intervention of Director Frank Reagan, it is difficult to find the whereabouts of Reacher and his special investigation team members, let alone Marlo Burns and her daughter who threw away their cell phones and ran away.

The reason why Jack suggested protecting the families of the special investigation team members was not because he was worried that Lanston and his gang would do something desperate, but to guard against the evil hands of a certain congressman.

"So, you're really not with Lanston?" Jack pushed the coffee cup in front of the frightened middle-aged woman.

"Of course not. When he stuffed a big bag of money into my hand, I knew I couldn't stay at home any longer. I had to protect my daughter."

Marlo Burns looked very bad. The skin of European and American women after the age of 40 is basically not good to look at. When she ran away, she obviously didn't bother to do any maintenance. Now she looked very different from her appearance in the photo without makeup.

"So the cash in your house was actually forced upon you by Lanston, but you could have refused and called the police." Dixon held a cup of passion fruit tea and sniffed the aroma.

She found that the big refrigerator in Jack's kitchen was a treasure. He could just take out a glass jar from it and mix some drinks to make the girls love it.

Marlo Burns was directly broken by her light words, and tears began to well up in her eyes.

"Langston is a former police officer who has been a superintendent in the NYPD for more than 20 years. He has helped many unethical guys escape from prison. Now, those people are being used by him, such as a vicious professional killer and his men."

Several special investigators looked at each other, and Reacher said calmly, "We killed him in Atlantic City."

Marlo Burns was slightly stunned, and continued, "Some professional gunmen."

"Only two survived Green-Wood Cemetery and are being protected in a hospital in New Jersey," Danny continued.

“And a whole motorcycle gang.” The woman choked again.

"I don't know how many will survive, but federal prison will be their future destination," Jubal added with a smile.

"But I'm only one person, and the things he threatened to do to me and my daughter, God, I can't even recount them all, so I ran away in fear."

Excitement and fear made Marlo Burns tremble all over and cry with tears and snot.

"OK, but you are safe now. We have the FBI, righteous NYPD detectives, and a group of former soldiers who want Langston to pay for his blood debt."

Jack handed her a whole pack of wet wipes and comforted her, "Let's talk about Tony Swan first. What role did he play in this? Was he Langston's accomplice? Or..."

Marlo Burns was just thanking Jack quietly when she heard the question and her eyes widened in surprise.

"Of course not. He was the one who tried to stop everything. If you knew Swan, you would know that he would never be involved in such a despicable act."

"Yes, some of us have always believed so." Reacher glared at his teammates, and several special investigators avoided his gaze awkwardly.

"We know that it was you who arranged Swan into the security department of the 'New Era'. Can you tell me why?" Jack continued to guide.

"Yes, that's right. That was more than a year ago. I was the one who hired Swan and made him Lanston's deputy because the security team of 'New Era' was almost solid.

They are all former NYPD officers from the same precinct, and almost all of them obey Langston’s orders.”

Hearing her say this, Hannah made a V sign to Jiejie with a hint of pride. This was almost the same analysis she had made when the three of them searched Marlo Burns's house.

"So you think that the security department cannot be out of the company's control forever, and you arranged for Swan to enter the security department to investigate privately, and then found out that something was wrong with the 'Little Wings' project?"

Jiejie's question surprised Marlo Burns, "How did you know?"

"We knew about the 'Little Wings' project, we knew about those MANPADS, and even Congressman LaVoy."

Jack said as he spread out the strange data he had printed out from Franz's USB drive in front of her, "Do you know what these numbers mean?"

"Of course." The woman recognized it at a glance. "These are the statistics of defective missile chips. Swan found that in the testing of chips equipped with the 'Little Wings' software, the number of chips with quality problems exceeded the normal range, especially in recent months.

I asked the quality control department, and they couldn't figure out the reason, but the CEO and the board of directors told me not to worry about the details. As long as the order could be completed on time, nothing else mattered.

Given that the missile performed very well in actual tests, we attributed it to problems in the processing rather than design flaws, and simply increased the number of chips purchased in order to select enough qualified products. "

"Of course, because this batch of missiles is just for show, and it's enough to fool people." Lei Che said coldly.

Marlo Burns was so surprised that she was speechless. Obviously, as an operations director, she knew something about the tricks of the "Little Wings" project.

"Go on, so what is Swan's opinion?" Reacher asked.

"Swan believes that someone in the engineering department deliberately manipulated the engineering test board to randomly mark some normally functioning chips as defective products."

Marlo Burns hugged her head and cried again, "I tried my best. I reported these problems to my superiors, but no one cared. The board of directors was more concerned about the R&D team and the subsequent defense contracts.

I told Swan to be careful, and he assured me that he would find a few trusted colleagues in the army to help, and then we lost contact. "

"Yes." O'Donnell, who had been listening, wiped his eyes and looked depressed and frustrated. "They are also our friends."

Negli put his hand on his shoulder and shook it to comfort him, "We will avenge them."

With Marlo Burns providing the final piece of the puzzle, the whole thing basically fell into place.

"New Era Technology" has developed a promising military software called "Little Wings", at least that's what they think.

In order to ensure that this project has sufficient financial support to continue, they specially designed a portable air defense missile that looks usable.

As a new defense company, New Era Technology obviously does not have the ability to compete with those established companies in other important military projects.

So we decided to take a different approach and come up with this eye-catching "black technology" work.

Perhaps the demonstration effect was a bit too much, and this "black technology" individual air defense missile was spotted by some small country or force, which led to a series of troubles afterwards.