Buy Navy NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service

Nine students holding a nightly campfire beach party are surprised by what sounds like fireworks, then a speedboat crashing into them, full of shot holes. The boys are delighted they can skip yet another lecture on sexual harassment when Navy Lt. Commander Farrell's body washes up, also shot-hole-littered, just as two drug dealers carrying $100 bills, two miles further, at Fort Story. The NCIS investigates in collaboration with DEA Agent Kent Fuller. They soon find out which drug gangs are involved. The money proves good forgery, possibly the motive if used to trick drug suppliers, and brings FBI Agent T.C. Fornell on the case as well, who informs them the bills were spend by 9-11 terrorists...
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After a sailor is found naked in a freezer, it is determined that he is suffering from long term drug use. But his recent drug test showed no signs of drugs. An agent who used to work for Gibbs calls on him for help to figure out if how he beat the drug screen.
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Gibbs is furious at the flippant local reception on a crime scene on a Quantico USMC training ground, which also turns out the full dumping ground of a cruel serial killer. Since one body is identified as smalltime mafioso Vic Gera alias Guido Valentino, the team faces a mob investigation, and someone powerful is crossing them, even using a rarely powerful computer to upset their system, but it turns out to be no less then the FBI, notably Senior FBI Agent T.C. Fornell, who tells Gibbs in confidence Gera was his man, he's after mafia don Jimmy Napolitano for years, but now needs Gibbs's help to track a moll, while the bureau suspects Fornell himself so he's jailed. Another corps is identified as Frankie Pilato, a missing witness against Napolitano. Fornell hangs himself in his cell. Gibbs offers Jimmy a multiple trap-deal...
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Gibbs's team is called in when a troubled teenager takes his classmates hostage by wearing an explosives around his chest. While Gibbs is taken hostage, DiNozzo must lead the team to diffuse the situation. Things are further complicated when the teenager makes his demand, he wants to see his mother, who has been reported as deceased. But the teen says he has seen his mother recently. Gibbs soon realizes the teen is not acting entirely on his own, someone else is manipulating the situation. They must figure a way to save all the hostages, and the teenager.
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Cassidy's team gets a tip on a terrorist plot, when they investigate. The agents are killed by a suicide bomber. Cassidy teams with Gibbs' team to find out who set up her agents. Ducky and Abby find evidence that seems to contradict each other. Gibbs reveals a secret to his team that affects some of his agents.
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While processing evidence from a crime scene, McGee is shocked when he discovers a link to his newest/unfinished novel. When the team finds 2 bodies, the race is on to find the killer and his link to McGee's work. McGee finally admits he based his characters off his co-workers.
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Marine brat Maddie Tylor, in college, best base friend of Gibbs's late daughter Kelly, asks his help against Marine Sergeant Rudi Haas, who she claims is stalking her since he returned from Iraq with unreturned romantic intentions. Gibbs literally twist Haas's arm, but shortly after he fails to prevent her being abducted from her home in Haas' car. Former Army Major Max Bourdais's security firm recently recruited Haas. When the team finds Haas, it's a corps nailed to the floor to torture him extensively, murdered before the kidnapping, but died within minutes from extreme seafood allergy; Maddie's place was trashed, presumably the murderers got her address from Haas. Haas's car GPS was tracked by Bourdais's firm; Special Inspector-general for Iraqi Reconstructions representative Marine Colonel Stacey Radcliffe confirm two other firm employees, Danny Coyle and Judd, were suspected of a $4,000,000 theft there, but lost the girl's trace. Then they realize it wasn't' about the girl herself but the money, and Gibbs takes a big risk...
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Gibbs's ex, NCIS director Jenny Shepard, has been killed in a '5 to 1' fire fight. Jethro orders Tony, who feels guilty (like Ziva) for obeying the director's fatal order to back off, to stay around and keep an eye on her successor assistant director Leon Vance's official investigation. Ducky diagnoses that Jenny was terminal. The girls practically break down emotionally. Gibbs learns from his ex-espionage partner, Mike Franks, about the finally declassified Oshimeida connection. McGee's computer skills prove decisive in tracing killer Viggo Drantyev, from the Decker funeral to the final suspect. The team's reception back at HQ is grim.
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A body is found in the water system on a Marine Base is discovered. Ducky finds a note stuffed inside the victims mouth which leads to a website which shows how the first victim was killed. The team races to find the culprit because they know there will be more victims.
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A murder investigation prompts Gibbs and the team to play family counselor to his former mentor, Mike Franks, in the hopes of preventing a bloody international conflict.
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With the team's help, Vance faces his demons while uncovering a complex relationship with a killer that puts his whole family in danger.
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When the enlisted son of retired Colonel-turned-preacher is found dead, the team believes he may be the victim of a hate crime. Meanwhile, Gibbs' father comes for a holiday visit
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The cleaner finds USMC special operations sergeant Mark Parsons in his bath. DiNozzo, air marshal Mark Neeley and David accompany Nora Williams, who is flown home from Paris to testify in a federal trial against her boss, Navy maintenance contractor Beringer Marine's CEO Ray Beringer. Parsons's safe indicates he was a hit-man, with Nora as latest target. The killer strikes again, while McGee helps Gibbs trace motive and who hired the killer.
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When a Marine is found dead, Gibbs, Fornell and the team hit the open road to bust an unlawful trucking operation.
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The team discovers striking similarities between themselves and their CGIS (Coast Guard Investigative Services) counterparts when a Navy diver seeking sunken treasure is found dead.
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A seaman out for a jog hears cries for help and goes to investigate. He's greeted by a shot to the chest.At the office, McGee brags about his video game skills and Tony is quickly distracted by Jimmy Palmer showing photos of his girlfriend to Ziva.Gibbs comes in to announce the body of the week: a dead petty officer on the pier.Gibbs and Ziva try to interview two stoner dudes, who manage to report there were two shots and two dudes in a black Lincoln. The victim is Scott Roebuck. He was found in the water.But wait, there's more! A man is strung up by chains under the dock. He's dead and was beaten to a pulp. His finger print pulls up an FBI red flag and no ID. But they recognize him as mobster Stefano Delmar. The petty officer stumbled onto a hit.Gibbs rides the elevator with FBI agent Tobias Fornell (Joe Spano). He tells Gibbs that Delmar turned state's evidence and was helping them. And he's not the only dead witness.In the morgue, Duckie tells them Roebuck's cause of death was drowning, he went in alive. Fornell says the other two witnesses were never found.Duckie says that it looks like Delmar had tetanus, punctures in his feet. He was in FBI custody the past few weeks, which means the FBI has a leak.Upstairs, the team reviews the hotels and agents on the witnesses. They find all the cases involved polygraphs done by Cooper's Hawk security.As Fornell is talking about the benefits of polygraphs, Gibbs interrupts. The punctures in Del Mar's foot were from a tack - a common trick used to beat the machines; the pain caused by stepping on one makes accurate reads difficult.Fornell and Gibbs go to a judge for a warrant on their clients. Judge Evelyn won't give them what they want, but offers to release Delmar's full testimony, which might have names they can follow.At the office, McGee reports he's gotten into Cooper's computer. They find Susan Grady, who is also an NCIS polygraph examiner who was semi-stalking McGee.Fornell and Gibbs meet with Susan, who is defensive and nervous, but mostly because Gibbs freaks her out, outside Cooper's office. As she's reassuring them that her part time job with Cooper's is above board, the Cooper's office behind them explodes into smithereens.Back at NCIS, Abby directs a platoon of forensic examiners sifting through the evidence. Gibbs sends McGee to talk to Susan, despite his protests that she practically sexually harassed him. She bursts into tears when she sees him and bear hugs him.Gibbs and Fornell watch the video feed of McGee talking to Susan. She apologizes to him for making him retake his test to see if he had a girlfriend. She liked working at Cooper's because unlike at NCIS, no one treated her like a lie detecting leper.She doesn't recognize a picture of Delmar and says the internet was down for a while that morning until the techs came.As McGee is trying to extricate himself, she looks at him moonily and suggests fate brought them together.Vance thinks the fact Susan is the only one at Cooper's who made it out alive means that she's either very lucky, or involved.Duckie and Palmer go over the charred bodies and Abby comes for a new batch to ID. Duckie tells Tony there were 10 victims. But there should have been 11 in the building when it blew up.Abby is suspicious of Susan, which she swears has nothing to do with her own history with McGee.She retreats her to lab to find McGee inflating an air mattress for Susan. He suggests Susan can stay at his place if it's a problem, but Abby decides the lab is fine.Susan tells McGee that not all of Cooper's records were destroyed - she took some of the polygraph results home to study. But they can access them remotely.They log on and see someone is accessing the files. They turn her web cam on and see someone in a hooded sweatshirt is on her computer in her place. Before they can lock the computer, the person grabs it. Later, Ziva and Tony return from Susan's place saying they found nothing. McGee's working on the client list.Abby IDs the missing employee: the janitor, Gus Templeton.When McGee sees Susan waiting eagerly for him, he asks to go out with Tony to the janitor. Tony advises McGee give Susan a shot. He suspects she has a really nice butt under those blouses.Gus Templeton answers the door for Tony and McGee holding a bucket and looking green around the gills. He's had food poisoning for two days, but he knows someone set a fire, even though it was reported as an accident.They bring him in. Susan is impressed with Gibbs' gut lie detector and says she can't tell at all without her machines.Gibbs shows Gus photos of the victims and mentions the $40,000 new fishing boat Gus just bought. Gus gets scared and says someone will kill him. He had gambling debts, but some guys offered to wipe the debts out in exchange for his access card. They were going to pose as computer techs.They find prints for Peter and Arnold Rafferty in Gus' place. Susan recognizes them as the computer techs. Apparently they were mentioned a lot in Delmar's testimony.Then it's Abby time. She says the brothers' DNA was on both Delmar and the petty officer and in the Cooper's office. They were incinerated in blast, turned to ash, so that's why they weren't among the bodies.Based on the fire marshal's report, the blast was very small, designed only to destroy the server. But it hit a gas main. Since Delmar's testimony against them was already on the record, Gibbs wonders what the Raffertys were trying to hide.They find the server that was downloaded held Cooper's polygraph files. Susan says it has the results, including the questions, which are standard - the same ones they ask at NCIS. Someone volunteers that Gibbs has never taken a polygraph.They have their guinea pig. Fornell and Vance gather 'round to watch. The questions touch on espionage and theft and Gibbs is answering "no" until "have you ever committed a felony?" He flashes back to killing the man who killed his wife and child and doesn't answer. He rips off the sensors.At both NCIS and FBI, you lose your clearance and likely your job if you fail. Cooper's was pushing for the test to be used in more areas.Abby has a list of the past year's clients, including senate confirmation appointees. Fornell and Gibbs recognize a name.They go back to Judge Eveyln and show her her name on the Cooper's list. She says she went to them as a "dry run" before her confirmation hearings. They ask her to take another test.Back at NCIS, Gibbs questions her about past cases, including one where a witness went missing. She says she doesn't know what happened to them and lying alarms go off. Gibbs and Fornell throw questions at her, asking if it bothered her to see bad guys go free even if they ratted out worse guys. She rips the sensors off and stands up to leave.They think the Rafferty brothers did her dirty work and the explosion goof wiped out any evidence of her connection. But then there was the break-in to Susan's, which they say was the first crime she committed herself. Gibbs asks her if she really thinks she's such a good criminal that she didn't leave a trace.Later, Susan tries to figure out if Gibbs was bluffing about the hair. Tony and Ziva tell her not to bother figuring out the ways of the Gibbs.McGee asks Susan to dinner, but she tries to read him and decides he's just asking to be polite. So she turns him down and leaves him thoroughly confused.
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A man is being taken out of an ambulance on a stretcher when a sedan crashes through the parking lot and into a parked car. The driver is dead.McGee finds a Facebook posting from Brenda Bittner, a woman at Gibbs' coffee shop, saying she's in a committed relationship with Tony DiNozzo. He comes to work and is appalled to find that the woman he thought he had a one night stand with thinks they're dating.Gibbs comes in to announce the body of the week. At the hospital, the victim is Lt. Jeffrey Hutton. McGee goes to find the victim's sister.DiNozzo tells Ziva about his idea of the perfect woman: independent, intelligent, successful.Duckie knows the car crash isn't what killed the lieutenant, but he doesn't know yet what did.Tony learns that the victim's sister is Dana Hutton, a TV reporter that Tony is hot to interview.He and Ziva go to her house. Tony dodges a call from his one night stand. He peers inside and sees the place has been ransacked. They go in.Tony finds a picture of her on assignment overseas and is captivated. She's not there.Back at the office we learn the victim and Dana were military brats, their father young in a training exercise. Their mom died five years ago.Jeffrey worked at Navy Information Operations Command (NIOC), which Tony calls "secret stuff."McGee goes to talk to Jeffrey's CO in MTAC.Tony's enraptured by Dana's resume.In the morgue, Duckie finds multiple organ failure but with no cause. The victim was in perfect health for his recent physical.Gibbs and McGee talk to Hutton's CO in MTAC. He says Hutton was a politician who knew how to work the system and he was working on something so classified that Vance will have to call the secretary of the navy to get them filled in.Tony and Ziva go to Dana's station where her producer tells them a friend and mentor of Dana's was killed in a car accident two weeks ago and she was the executor of his estate, including an old book store.She was working on a piece on private military companies but lately had gotten interested in old Soviet spy stuff. He says she lost objectivity when she was passionate about something.Tony asks if she had a boyfriend. The producer doesn't know.In Vance's office, he introduces Gibbs to Alejandro Rivera with the Mexican justice department, who's in town to set up an international task force. In breezes M. Allison Hart, Gibbs' crush. She's been appointed Rivera's legal counsel for the task force. She tells Gibbs that Rivera helped her get Colonel Bell out of prison. She has temporary employee status.Palmer checks with Abby, who has found nothing in Hutton's tox screen and is ornery about it. Tony calms her with a hug and asks about the prints in Dana's condo. She hasn't gotten to them yet and tosses them both out.At the elevator, Palmer congratulates Tony for hooking up with Brenda Bittner and asks if they'd like to double date.Gibbs comes for his update and is peeved Tony isn't around.He's in the conference room watching Dana's reports, including a thoughtful one with an author in which she mentions her friend's bookstore and one in the middle east while taking fire.The next morning, Gibbs asks Tony for the umpteenth time if he's talked to his friend at NIOC. Not yet. He asks McGee for her cell phone number and tells Gibbs he wants to check out the book store.Duckie comes in to work to find Palmer already there and going back over Hutton. He found a dot on the x-ray on his shoulder and a mark on his shoulder.Duckie lets Palmer cut him open. He finds a tiny sphere which goes to Abby in the lab.Allison Hart and Rivera drop in on Abby. He calls her a legend in her field and she's flattered but shuts down Hart's suggestions of a tour, saying she doesn't have time.Tony goes to the bookstore, which has a for sale sign in the window. A woman named Maggie Reed lets him in. She says the owner, Charley Baskum was like a father to Dana and the sale proceeds are going to charity.Tony recognizes the couch that Dana said in her report she used to curl up on as a kid. He notices the wall safe is open.Gibbs talks again to Hutton's CO in MTACT after gaining clearance. He was working on a report on private military companies and he suggested a stop to working with them.In the lab, Abby announces that Hutton was murdered. The tiny dot is a spherical metal pellet that had traces of ricin in it, an old Cold War-era KGB weapon.Duckie says Hutton was injected three or four days before without his knowledge and there was no antidote.Gibbs tells Vance about the coincidence of both siblings working on stories about private military contractors.Allison drops by Gibbs' basement at 1 a.m. She knows he isn't thrilled she's working at NCIS. She says Dana is a close friend and they last spoke a week ago. She had just broken up with her producer boyfriend. She tells him if he wants to know more, he's going to have to ply her with liquor.The next day, Tony goes to see the producer in a huff. He gives him a shove and tells him there are consequences for lying to federal agents. He asks how serious they were the producer says she's not the angel she seems like on TV, she uses people.McGee goes to the lab and finds Rivera saying good bye to Abby in full charm mode, telling her she can stay with him when she visits Mexico. He invited her to a symposium.She tells McGee she got into Lt. Hutton's hard drive. He was accessing old FBI and CIA files, including transcripts with a KGB agent from 1985, which McGee explains was the "year of the spy" because more spies were arrested that year than any other.Ziva shows Gibbs the accident report for Charley Bascum. He died in a head on collision with a car that blew a tire, definitely an accident. But they find his name was an alias.Ziva tells Gibbs that Tony got physical with Danas producer. She thinks he might be obsessed.From inside her dark apartment, Tony leaves Dana a message saying they can help her and he feels like he knows her. He hears a noise behind him and thinks it's her. It's Ziva, who opens with a movie reference to 1941's Laura, about a cop who falls for a missing woman.She reminds him it's a murder investigation and Dana's not just going to walk into his life.In the lab, Duckie tells Gibbs about Baskum's autopsy. He found a pink tooth indicating an old dental treatment used in the Soviet Union in the mid-1900s. He was Russian.In MTAC, Vance tells the team about the legend of Yuri, the KGB banker operating in Washington during the Cold War. It fits Charley Baskum perfectly. He had a $10 million slush fund.McGee and Ziva wonder if that means he was the Hutton's handler but Tony won't listen to any suggestions that Dana was a spy. They suggest Yuri's money could be at the center of things.They head to the book store. Tony goes outside to take a call. Inside, Gibbs finds microfiche wedged in a book case.Late at night, Tony waits alone across from the Washington Monument. Dana Hutton joins him. He was expecting her. She says she's been hiding since a panicked phone call from her brother. Tony tells her how her brother died and the method's origins with the KGB. She asks him what else he knows and he tells her about Yuri and his slush fund. But she knew. She opened the safe in the book store and found Russian documents and codes. She told her brother about it and he used his clearance to look into them.She didn't want to expose Charley as Yuri until she was sure. She says there was no money in the safe, but she knows where it is.Tony brings Dana to the team at the bookstore. She shows them a leather-bound first edition, collected works of Shakespeare, worth about $6 million. And a complete first edition Gutenberg Bible printed on vellum, stolen by the Nazi's in WWII. The book case is full of similar rare books.They ask her who killed her brother. She doesn't know, but says it's probably the same person who killed her. She pulls back her sleeve to reveal a small red dot. Tony looks crestfallen.Back at NCIS, Vance tells Gibbs the FBI is thrilled with the microfiche, which was Yuri's accounting ledger with names and dates. Gibbs recognizes a name.Back at the bookstore they meet Maggie Reed. In Russian, Gibbs tells her she's under arrest for murder. She could have left after Charley died but she was greedy and wanted the KGB money.Tony visits Gibbs in the basement for some mugs of Scotch. He says Dana went peacefully, but he broke rule No. 10, again: Never get personally involved in a case.Gibbs admits that's the one he always had the most trouble with.
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The team tries to track down a serial killer, while Abby heads south of the border to give a speech with McGee in tow.
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(Previously, Abby reminds Gibbs that her report says Gibbs killed Pedro Hernandez 20 years ago. Gibbs thinks Col. Murton Bell the mercenary is out to get him. He goes down to Mexico and finds that one of Bell's men has killed him.)Gibbs has had an unpleasant encounter with J.P. Dean and is taken to the residence of Paloma Reynosa, the leader of the drug cartel. As they are sitting outside on the terrace of her expansive home, Paloma tells Gibbs that Pedro Hernandez was her father.Back at the office, Ziva revels in passing her citizenship test. As the team tries to reassure themselves that there's no reason to worry about Gibbs, who, they have learned has gone to Mexico, Vance walks up and asks them if they shouldn't be doing something (i.e. following up on Gibbs).Vance then tells McGee to meet with him in MTAC where they discuss Alejandro Rivera. Vance is trying to control the Gibbs situation by asking the Federales to look for Bell in Mexico. He wants Allison Hart out of the loop, so all communications between Rivera are to be directed through McGee.When Vance and McGee conference with Rivera, he tells them they found a dismembered body that might be Bell. It was near the home of Mike Franks. Vance asks permission to send Naval personnel down to get evidence as other members of Bell's team were also found murdered.At the Reynosa compound, Paloma calls Bell a "means to an end" -- Gibbs. She tells him he has value as a federal agent. She doesn't want his death, she wants his life.He thinks she's trying to blackmail him into working with her by exposing her father's murder. She says she might not kill him, but she will kill everyone close to him, starting with his mentor Mike Franks, then his ex-mother in law, his coworkers and his father. J.P. Dean, the disgraced Army ranger believed to be working for Bell, lays a severed finger on the table.Vance tells Ziva and Tony he is sending them to Mexico for a body transport. McGee tells Vance the Federales think they know were Gibbs is. Vance pretends to be surprised McGee mentioned Gibbs to Rivera. Then Vance tells Ziva and Tony they have only two hours before their transport will leave Mexico, implying that they wouldn't have time to find Gibbs. After Vance walks away, Tony tells Ziva, that Gibbs and Vance have a "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" way of communicating. Tony continues telling Ziva that he thinks he saw Vance wink and takes that to mean they're supposed to look for Gibbs during the two hours the plane is on the ground.In Mexico, Rivera and the Federales break down Paloma's door. Rivera asks Gibbs if he wishes to press charges. Gibbs says there were no threats made against him directly and goes with Rivera.Rivera takes Gibbs from Paloma's residence and her thugs. In the car, Rivera asks Gibbs about Abby's report, and says he hasn't seen it. Rivera asks Gibbs if someone stopped the report. Gibbs answers by telling Rivera that he wouldn't allow it. Rivera reacts with surprise when Gibbs tells him the report was sent to the task force. Rivera's car pulls to a stop. Dean opens the door for Gibbs. They're back at Paloma's house -- Rivera is her brother.At NCIS, Abby joins Ziva and Tony in the elevator, telling them Gibbs invoked Rule 40 (if you think someone's out to get you, they probably are). "If the 40's are in play, something unspeakably bad is going down," Tony says.In Mexico, Gibbs doesn't see a way out. Paloma says his first assignment will be to transport a small package. Gibbs calmly replies that he isn't going to be her mule. Gibbs provokes Rivera into drawing on him by mentioning his own father. Paloma cautions her brother not to let Gibbs make him into a killer. Gibbs tries to goad Rivera into pulling the trigger and finding out what it feels like to mete out justice.Tony and Ziva land in Mexico and resolve not to leave without Gibbs. As the transport door opens, Gibbs is walking towards them. (Rivera knew the transport plane would pick up the bodies found on the beach, so he conveniently sends Gibbs back via the transport.) Locating Gibbs couldn't have been easier.On the plane, Gibbs says Mike Franks left the day before the hit came, and says that he's going to clean up the mess he left.At MTAC in NCIS HQ, Rivera tells Vance that he had to run Gibbs out of the country.In the morgue, Ducky is examining one of the bodies from Mexico. Palmer's opening crates with a reversible drill is driving Ducky to distraction. Ducky makes the realization that he "can't think". Palmer tries to prompt Ducky's memory with story cues. With the second cue, Ducky has an "Ah-ha" moment and relates a story about playing golf in Scotland - the moral of the story being one of respecting the tools you have at hand, and tells Palmer to go back to work - quietly.When Gibbs returns home, he calls his dad and asks him to stay with a friend.In the lab, Abby finds that the bullets found in Bell were from Gibbs' gun, and Ducky realizes Gibbs is being framed.Before leaving his home, Gibbs reloads his pistol.Over Bell's headless, handless corpse, Ducky explains that he found the same serrated knife pattern on Bell's body that he found on Macy. They realize one of Bell's men turned on him and is working with the cartel, but how did he get Gibbs' gun? Based on the evidence from Macy's autopsy and Merton Bell's autopsy, Ducky knows it's the same killer and comments that the only way a pistol would be taken from Gibbs would be by prying it "out of his cold, dead hand".Ziva and Tony sift through the electronic trail. Bell's plane has checked out of the hanger and his cell phone has been used since the time Bell supposedly died. If Bell is dead, then someone else has taken over for Bell.When Gibbs arrives, Tony tells him Vance wants to see him. As they see Bell's phone being used to make a call, Gibbs' phone rings.Vance uses the parallel of Rick and Louis in "Casablanca" to describe their working relationship. Vance tells Gibbs he's tired of having to look the other way while Gibbs sneaks around on his own. "My job, my life does not revolve around you, you ego-centric son of a bitch," Vance says as he benches Gibbs. Gibbs then tosses a cell phone on Vance's desk, and Vance takes a chip from his cell phone.McGee interrupts to say Bell's jet is on its way to Virginia, and Rivera is on the next plane.In the lab, Abby has an armed guard. She confirms to Gibbs that the severed finger does belong to Mike Franks and he was alive when it was shot off. She asks if they have Mike. Gibbs shrugs and hugs her.(When Abby gets her chance to talk to Gibbs, she does it by locking down her lab. She asks him again what to do about her forensics report, and Gibbs tells her to send it. Gibbs refuses to tell her anything else beyond that. Thereafter, Ducky tells Gibbs he made the connection with Pedro Hernandez and asks Gibbs who is out to get him. Gibbs refuses to answer, getting on the elevator and leaving while Ducky is trying to talk to him. Gibbs avoids talking to the two people who are his closest friends.)Allison Hart pays a visit to Ducky in the autopsy suite. The room is mostly dark except for the light over Bell's body. She says she considered him a good man. Ducky asks a few questions to get her to talk about Bell vs. Gibbs. Hart lets some information slip about wanting to know more about Gibbs, then she remembers that Ducky has "some sort of psychology degree" and clams up.As Vance preps the team for the arrival of Dean on Bell's plane, Gibbs gets a text message asking, "Am I safe?"At the airfield, the team sets up with Ziva as sniper. The plane lands and Dean deplanes with three other men. The NCIS agents flip on the flood lights, and Dean is told that he's under arrest. He mutters something about a double cross and draws his gun. A shoot out follows.At NCIS, Gibbs removes the package Paloma gave him from one of the body crates that was transported back from Mexico.In the morgue, J.P. Dean is on a slab. Dean is tied back to killing Macy and Bell while working with the cartel, and it is mentioned that he might have killed Franks. Then Ducky says he recovered .45 slugs from the shoot out in Mexico, the weapon of choice carried by Mike Franks.Gibbs sits on a park bench with Rivera, assuming he set Dean up to run into NCIS. He's the perfect fall guy. Gibbs gives Rivera the package, saying Rivera's got all the cards because he's got Franks.Vance joins them, picking up the package. Rivera says it's candy as Vance picks it up and smells it. Rivera asks about Abby's report, and Vance also tells him she sent it to the task force already. Rivera leaves.Vance takes a tape recorder out of his pocket and plays Rivera's comments. He gives Gibbs his cell phone battery back and sits down. Gibbs knows the package was a test. They're on the same page. Gibbs says he thinks Franks left the shoot out in Mexico in pieces.Gibbs realizes that Vance never got Abby's report, and Vance says a decades' old cold case isn't his business. Again, Vance uses the Casablanca parallel, telling Gibbs about Bogart's going to a bar after filming, still dressed from the set. While at the bar, it's decided that Bogart is needed back on the set. A production assistant is sent after Bogart for one final scene. All Bogart had to do was nod to acknowledge his cooperation with the Resistance. Then Vance says if something has to happen with Alejandro, Gibbs doesn't have to say a word. Gibbs nods.Later, Vance asks Tony for a minute.The next day, Gibbs is dressed to go to Ziva's naturalization ceremony. When he opens the door to leave, Allison Hart is there. Hart follows Gibbs into the house. She asks him if he believes in right and wrong and asks why he wanted to be a cop. She pulls out a copy of Abby's report and a couple of law books. As Ziva swears her citizenship oath, there are two empty seats behind her, one of which was for Gibbs.In the meantime, Tony walks casually down a Mexican street, but it is clear that he is following someone.Gibbs tells Allison he doesn't need her help, he's got his own code. Then she tells him she thinks they could beat the case.In Mexico, Tony is a few steps behind Alejandro Rivera when he's pulled into an alley by Mike Franks. Tony says his mission is observe and report. Franks says he's got it from there. He can pull the trigger with his thumb.Alone in his home, Gibbs walks into his bedroom. There are boxes in the room as though he had been packing his personal items. As he stands in the doorway, Gibbs remembers Shannon sitting on the bed, with a box on her lap. She's reading through various slips of paper that are his "rules" (Rule No. 44 -- First things first, hide the women and children). She's tickled he's writing them down. He then sits down in a chair by the bed and looks through the box. He looks at a picture of his wife and daughter as he remembers talking to Franks about being a Marine for life and asking for a job. He thought he'd be a good cop. He looks at Rule No. 13: Never involve a lawyer.Gibbs turns the piece of paper over and writes, "Rule #51: Sometimes -- You're wrong."In the final scene, the door to the small store of Jackson Gibbs is opened. He turns around around and asks if he can help the customer who's just entered the store. It's Paloma Reynosa.
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When the motives behind an attack on a female bomb tech link her to a murder, the NCIS team investigates her very guarded personal life.
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When the body of an American Petty Officer is connected to a British Navy vessel, murder turns into an international incident.
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Delving into the mind of a brilliant Naval Scientist, Abby becomes fixated on solving her murder, while DiNozzo's latest fling leads to an interesting Halloween.
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The NCIS team investigates the disappearance of a Navy petty officer who is the sole witness in an upcoming murder trial.
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Gibbs and the NCIS team partner with a Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) Agent to solve the murder of a Marine gunned down on a dinner boat.
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A petty officer's recruitment session at a college fair comes to a fatal end, prompting the NCIS team, accompanied by Dr. Mallard's predecessor, to solve his murder.
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The NCIS team springs into action to find the assailant responsible for beating a Marine to death in his own backyard.
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A botched assassination attempt in Belgravia forces NCIS to protect the Defense Minister's daughter, who is studying in the U.S. and smitten with McGee. Meanwhile, Gibbs investigates the death of the U.S. Marine who was killed in the bombing.
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The dismembered fingertips and teeth of a murdered Marine are discovered in the stolen purse of a pickpocketer, launching NCIS on a mission to find a cold-blooded killer.
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NCIS discovers that one of its former investigative assistants found brutally stabbed to death was selling details for how to rob a warehouse full of valuable possessions belonging to a woman convicted of fraud. Meanwhile, a new special agent joins the office.
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NCIS connects a message in blood left by a murdered Navy commander to a manuscript that may contain classified military information.
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To Gibbs' displeasure, Special Agent E.J. Barrett returns to lead the investigation of a seaman's death that may be connected to a series of port-related murders. Meanwhile, Ziva finally introduces her boyfriend, Ray, to the team.
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After Tony's ex-partner, Danny Price, appears to be the Port-to-Port Killer's latest victim, he revisits his days as a detective in Baltimore, including his first encounter with Gibbs.
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After new evidence reveals that the Port-to-Port killer has infiltrated the agency, the NCIS teams chase every lead in a race to track him down.
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After spending months tracking down his target, Tony is left with the blood of an NCIS agent on his hands and it's up to Gibbs to help him put the pieces of the puzzle together.
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The NCIS team uncovers a startling surprise after a young Marine shows up to his homecoming party with a fatal stab wound.
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The line between McGee's personal and professional life is blurred when NCIS uncovers a connection between his grandmother and the murder of a Navy lieutenant.
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The NCIS team searches for the person and motive behind a contract killer targeting a Navy Lieutenant Commander. Meanwhile, Abby uncovers new information about her family after undergoing tests for a kidney donation.
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When a coast guard officer is gunned down on a cargo vessel, the NCIS team searches for the killer, but finds a Lebanese family seeking refuge on American soil. Meanwhile, Tony and McGee try and find the perfect woman for Gibbs.
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An NCIS case changes from accidental death to murder when evidence reveals that a Navy lieutenant died of forced over-hydration. Meanwhile, Gibbs meets Ducky's new love interest.
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The NCIS team uncovers a discrepancy with DNA remains when investigating the crash of a military plane that had been transporting caskets.
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After Anthony DiNozzo, Sr. is found in a car with a dead body in the trunk and no memory of the previous night, the NCIS team must figure out if he is capable of murder. Meanwhile, Tony is sidelined for this case and must go against orders to try and prove his father's innocence.
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When a Navy captain is killed in a hotel room, NCIS must track down and protect his very pregnant companion from unknown assailants. Meanwhile, Jimmy has problems of his own when he brings his future father-in-law to work.
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When a Navy lieutenant commander is found dead in a building under construction, NCIS must search for a killer while dealing with interruptions from her distraught detective husband.
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During a routine stop for his morning coffee, Gibbs finds himself staring down the barrel of a gun, forcing him to question choices he has made in the past and present.
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When a Navy captain is found dead with an unusual costume hidden under his uniform, NCIS uncovers a secret society of real-life super heroes and must track down the villain.
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When a high-level security Navy reservist is found dead, Gibbs goes face-to-face with Dr. Samantha Ryan of the PsyOps Division to uncover the truth behind the potential suicide. Meanwhile, DiNozzo argues with accounting after seeing McGee's paycheck.
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Top-secret clearance from a Naval research laboratory is jeopardized when the murder of a Chief Petty Officer is connected to an international arms dealer. Meanwhile, Probationary Agent Ned Dorneget tries to butter up Gibbs in hopes of joining the team.
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The Secretary of the Navy partners Gibbs with Dr. Samantha Ryan after top secret information is leaked by someone on the inside.
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A couple tries for their third picnic spot, but the woman's not happy. She relocates to under a tree. As she does, the spot they just left becomes the landing pad for a body falling from the sky.
Jimmy comes in to work in a trenchcoat and flashes his wedding duds. A powder blue tuxedo with frilly pink shirt. They've decided to go "kitsch".They're all in the wedding, but he hasn't picked a best man yet.
Gibbs calls in with the body of the week. They find his absence suspicious.
At his house, he says good-bye to Samantha (Jaime Lee Curtis). She stayed over. They're all glowy.
At the scene, Gibbs is running late.The victim could have fallen anywhere between 400 and several thousand feet. He's First Lt. Walter Larabee.He looks stabbed or shot in addition to his broken bones from the fall.They find a challenge coin from the chaplain corps in his pocket. It's caked with dried blood.
At the office, Gibbs meets with Navy Commander Maria Castro, a chaplain. She doesn't know Larabee, but knows Navy Commander Theresa Wade, the woman the blood on the coin was traced to.
Chaplain Wade has served multiple missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, about a month ago she went on a relief mission to Cartagena, Colombia. They haven't been able to reach her for a week.Castro is really worried about her.
In the morgue, Duckie pre-emptively rejects the best man honor -- mentors make terrible wingmen. But he's psyched about the tux. Gibbs joins them. "Allow me to make my way from the horrific to the curious," Duckie says.
Larabee was beaten, stabbed and shot. He was alive when he was thrown from the aircraft. There were bullets in his vest and tiny fungi crammed in his taped shut mouth.
Time for the victim rundown. Larabee was 32 and just finished his second tour in Afghanistan. He just accepted a tour to the embassy in Colombia. His wife is pregnant with their first child.
There were three planes in the airspace over the park when Larabee was dropped: a medical transport chopper, retired air force pilot and his family and a single engine Cessna registered to Alfred Holbrook, who was busted 30 years for possession with intent to sell.
Tony and McGee inspect Holbrook's plane. He's been in a wheelchair for a year and two months since getting hit by a drunk driver. He suggests his license was stolen and his plane hasn't left the ground.
Down in the lab, Abby reports the bullets came from a Russian AK 47. The mushroom is an herbicide for cocoa plants, used only in Noreno, Colombia. Cartel country.
Upstairs, Palmer asks Ziva for advice on who to pick as his best man. She tells him to go with his gut. Ziva is waiting for a call and it comes through in MTAC.Ziva talks to her old friend Monique, who says she might know how to find Wade.
Monique is working on a school construction project. She heard the cartel is taking Americans. She's Retired Interpol Agent Monique Lisson.She has footage from the Cartagena police showing chaplain Wade and Larabee getting into a Courage Mission International van. They provide vaccines and antibiotics to villagers.
Gibbs suggests Ziva join Lisson in Colombia.
Ziva says Lisson is like a sister. She doesn't want Tony going with her, but Gibbs insists. Castro insists on going as well.
Gibbs runs into Samantha in the elevator. She says DOD knows he's on top of it. She gives him a pizza box. Inside says: "Carter's Nursery, Fairfax. See Manny."
In Colombia, Ziva, Tony and Maria check in to their hotel -- they're stuck sharing a room.Monique meets them and says they have to wait until dark to travel to the village.
McGee pays Manny a visit at the nursery. He flashes his badge and Manny runs. Gibbs stops him with a trash can lid.Manny is a drug smuggler set up by the government after flipping. He says a drug run from Cartegena would be $50,000.
Then he says he's doing flights for the CIA. He flew down empty and flew back with medical canister filled with vials of blood. But he says he can prove he didn't fly yesterday.
In Colombia, Monique tells Ziva stories at a sidewalk restaurant. They are interrupted by a drive by shooter. They take cover and are unharmed.
They talk to Gibbs in MTAC, Monique insists she wasn't followed. Tony is suspicious of her.
Later at night, Tony talks to Maria. He asks her why she insisted on coming with them. Chaplain Wade's assignment to bring immunizations to the local villagers was supposed to be hers. She feels responsible.
Back in NCIS, McGee confirms Manny the mule's alibi on a school trip with his son. Gibbs wonders why Samantha gave him his name.
Gibbs pays her a visit, saying her tip got them nowhere. She swears she didn't know about Colombia until he got involved. She says she can't help it, she hears things and starts digging. She thinks it's possible Wade and Larabee stumbled on to something. She suggests he bring his team home.She says she doesn't know what happened to the missionaries they were traveling with.
McGee called their number and got a recording.
Gibbs wants answers. McGee runs two names from Wade's emails: Stephen Wheeler and Constance Mazney. He runs them and finds they both have blocked government files.
Palmer visits Abby in the lab and asks her to be his Best Woman. She's thrilled.
Gibbs joins them. The AK 47 that killed Larabee is the weapon of choice of the Lazaro cartel which operates where the missionaries were heading with vaccines.
Monique and Ziva talk a walk. Monique confesses she's involved with something she can't get out of and she wants to protect Ziva. She tells Ziva to go home and accept they can't solve the case. Monique warns her she could end up dead if she doesn't.
In the office, McGee breaks through the files on Wheeler and Mazney, the people who guided Larabee and Wade into the mountains. They're not missionaries; they're CIA.
Gibbs takes their names to Samantha, who says the vaccinations are a ruse to take blood samples of the cartel to connect the families by DNA. There really are vaccines, but Wade and Larabee didn't know what they were up to.
Gibbs tells her to just tell him up front next time.
Ziva tells Monique about the CIA. She says she doesn't know any more than that.
Tony and Ziva resolve to find the CIA.
Two people race into their van, on the run. Ziva and Monique pop out of the back. The CIA people say the chaplains were there as cover. The cartel made an example out of Larabee. They assume Wade is dead, but Ziva isn't ready to give up."What do you guys have in mind?" Mazney asks."Bang," says Ziva.
Cut to news footage of a cartel warehouse fire in Cartagena. They video conference with Tony and Ziva in a van -- they have Wade and are on their way to the airfield with Monique.
At the airfield, Monique says she's staying behind. She still won't tell Ziva what she's up to.
Gibbs answers his front door. He invites Samantha in for a beer. He's still a little bitter she kept things from him. Samantha says Lisson has information she needs and has screwed her over the years.Samantha knew Lisson was involved from day one.
He asks her if she's staying. She doesn't have a sitter. They cuddle on the couch.
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A fire rages in a warehouse and crews manage to get it under control.With the fire finally out, they find a body.They call for the arson unit and then notice a classified file.
Ziva and McGee report to the scene. The warehouse is owned by United Equinox, an electronics company that makes modems and toaster ovens.The company also worked on top secret weapons systems.
Jason King of the Baltimore PD arson unit recognizes Tony, he just switched from homicide. They don't seem friendly.
Duckie examines the charred victim. Jason thinks the fire was started near the victim with a flare. He corrects Tony at every chance and directs them to an empty fire drawer with a busted lock.
Security shows the last person to enter the premises did so at 4:03 a.m. -- 40 minutes before the fire was reported. Carter Plimpton was a civilian but Gibbs calls it an NCIS case.
Back at the lab, they confirm the victim was Plimpton, a product systems analyst. Tony explains he met Jason once 20 years ago when Jason was nine years old.
Gibbs comes in and posts a picture of the Phantom 8, part of the Navy's Watcher group -- including the guy who shot Tony and was hunting EJ. Two of them were murdered in the last nine months -- make that three, Plimpton was part of the black ops group.
In the morgue, Jason King snaps photo while Duckie dissects. Duckie finds the whole thing unusual. Plimpton's skin was doubly burned -- he was tortured with the road flare on one side of his body, which means the killer got what he wanted.
McGee and Ziva visit the United Equinox factory where the supervisor says Carter did product testing. He says the warehouse didn't have anything top secret in it. He hasn't heard of Watcher Fleet.
Gibbs joins Abby in the lab where she's watching "Myth Busters" play with thermite reaction. She found some on the victim. It burns through metal, but had an added component to slow the burn.
Tony walks Jason to the elevator, but he doesn't want to talk."This means you haven't forgiven me about your sister?" Tony says."That's exactly what it means," Jason says.
McGee tells Gibbs he hacked the Naval Intelligence Database and found a Watcher file for a project called Aquamarine. There was a file with the same name in the warehouse.The project was initiated four years ago, when Carter was with Watcher Fleet.
He left in 2008 to work at United Equinox.
Back at the big screen, McGee gets a hit on arsonist Billy Wayne, who used termite in his crimes. He's in prison. They bring him to interview.
He says you don't need termite to burn paper, it was used to send a message or for fun. He thinks someone was practicing for a bigger event.
He developed a recipe for slow-burning thermite and told Janice, who's writing a book about him. She visited him last week.
Down in the lab, Abby shows Jason her termite tests. He tells her he got into arson because he was in a fire as a kid and they never caught the guy.
McGee gets an alert about a suspicious blaze on a cargo ship less than a mile from the warehouse.
At the scene, there are no injuries but tarps on top of a cargo hold burned. The hold was empty. The solid steel deck showed signs of heat fatigue -- termite.
Jason follows his nose down into the hold, following the ship's wiring. He follows it to the fuse box. When he checks it, sparks and a fire quickly spreads along the wiring. Jason shoves Tony out of the room and seals the airlock door. The fire quickly burns out. Jason says it was a trap and now they're even.
Back in the lab, Abby tells Gibbs the source of the flash fire wasn't a bomb. Someone set a small termite charge in the junction box, causing the insulation in the wires to carbonize. That's not supposed to happen, the wiring is flawed. It could have spread to the whole ship if Jason hadn't sealed it in.Whoever set the fire knew the wiring was flawed. It was made by United Equinox.
McGee and Gibbs meet with the United Equinox boss Jack Murdoch. They have hacked memos from Plimpton to the boss requesting an inquiry. Murdoch says the chance of something going wrong was very low. He says there weren't enough proven cases of "flash over" to legally warrant a warning or recall.
They explain the arsonist knew about it. He says they installed it in civilian uses only four years ago. He says again he's never heard of Watcher Fleet.
Ziva and McGee notice Tony acting strangely. They show him a picture from the paper of him carrying young Jason out of a fire.
Tony explains he was in Baltimore for the Final Four and was out for a walk at night and saw smoke and heard a scream coming out of a townhouse. He went in. They think he should be proud.
He says it was more complicated than that.
Flash back to Tony going into a townhouse in flames and following cries for help. He found Jason in the closet and started to carry him out. They were in the hallway when Jason heard his sister and yelled for Tony to help her, but the ceiling collapsed. Tony had to choose to save Jason or risk all of them dying trying to save his four-year-old sister.
Gibbs interrupts for a report.
They have a phone record of a call Billy the firebug made from prison to Mary Gardocki aka "Janice".
Gibbs sees the news clipping and tells Tony that he helped when others didn't.
Gibbs meets with Mary in interview. She's a sales rep for a chemical company and sells napalm, which is legal.Gibbs shows her a photo of the Watcher Fleet. She's heard of them but never met them.
Gibbs examines her closely and then removes her scarf. She's burned. She says she's using Billy to develop a slower burning thermite to make money. She says she didn't kill anyone and has been in a burn center for the last three days.
They confirm her alibi.
Ziva checked the civilian ships with the faulty wiring and found there were no reported problems.
They're stumped.Abby calls.
In the lab, Jason and Abby tell Gibbs they found ammonium phosphate is the secret ingredient. The brand of retardant the arsonist used is sold only to the forest service. They're checking the buyers against known arsonists and get a hit. Jason recognizes him as the fire department site inspector from both scenes.
Gibbs is irritated Jason didn't realize sooner the man was an impostor.
They race up to Bruce Johnson's house and stop him in his car.He immediately says he wants a deal. He says the guy who hired him wanted Plimpton's information on bad wiring. He claims he didn't mean to kill him but Carter wouldn't talk.
Gibbs barks at Bruce to turn off his car. He assesses the situation and asks again for a deal. He turns the car off and the car explodes. Jason wants to help him, but the car is engulfed in flames and Tony holds him back.
Ziva found the missing file in his house. It's a list of every navy warship that contains the faulty wiring. They did sell it to the Navy.
The current Watcher Fleet has been working to retrofit the ships but only a third have been fixed.
Back at the office, they hit the phones to notify everyone and bolster security. "Aquamarine" was top secret to protect the Navy, so who knew?
Tony goes to talk to Jason, who accuses him of giving up on saving Bruce Johnson, just like he gave up on saving Amy, Jason's sister.Tony gets in the elevator and tells Jason he has learned you can't save everyone. Tony became a cop because he saved Jason and liked making a difference. He tells Jason to focus on the ones he can still save.
Gibbs wonders if the Watcher Fleet microchips could have had info on the wiring flaws.McGee says it's possible, but they think they're all accounted for.
At sea on the USS BrewerA sailor sees lights from inside the Machine Room and goes to investigate. He doesn't get far before the door explodes.
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U.S.S. Brewer at seaA sailor checks his phone, looking at family photos. He drops it under the stairs.Meanwhile, a man rigs an electrical box with a small charge.
The sailor gets his phone and the man lights his charge. The wires ignite, but the man can't get out of the room because the sailor is blocking his exit. He goes for an escape hatch, but the room blows.
In MTAC, Admiral Theodore Tully briefs everyone on the threat to the ships. He's glad the casualties weren't worse; but Gibbs doesn't think it's over. Vance is away at a NATO conference until the end of the week.
McGee preps to hop a flight to the Brewer, which will be back in Norfolk tomorrow.
They have no leads on their dead arsonist Bruce Johnson.
In the morgue, Duckie has a personal matter but tells Gibbs it can wait. Duckie doesn't have much from Johnson's body.
Gibbs visits Abby in the garage with Johnson's car. She went through Johnson's cross cut shredder and found a document with Korean characters. She can't reconstruct the document, but wonders if it means N. Korea was behind the attacks.
Ziva promises someone they'll reschedule and they can try to get their deposit back.
NCIS Analyst Emma Park drops by and reports no N. Korean chatter. She knows about Ziva's weekend plans.
Gibbs and Tony talk to McGee aboard the Brewer in MTAC. The victims were Erik Ramsey, the sailor, and Tobey Abbott, a civilian with Norton Turbine following up repairs to the ship's power plant. McGee suggests they have to consider Abbott a suspect.McGee pauses to hurl, wracked with sea sickness.
Tony and Ziva visit the arsonist's widow, who scoffs at the idea he knew Korean. They were getting divorced.
They talk to the postman, who says Johnson was getting mail from Switzerland.
Duckie drops by Gibbs' house. Duckie confesses he's come in to a lot of money from his mother's passing. Duckie's redoing his will and wants Gibbs to be his executor. Gibbs would be honored.
U.S.S. BrewerGibbs and Duckie board the Brewer in port. McGee joins Tony and Ziva in Abbott's quarters. They find an envelope from Switzerland with a letter in Korean inside. Even McGee knows Ziva's weekend plans.
Back in the office, Emma Park tells Admiral Tully and Gibbs the Korean is jibberish. She's checking to see if it's a code.
In the office, Tony finds Abbott wanted to join the Navy but got rejected twice.
In Abby's lab, she knows Tony is going nuts not knowing about Ziva's weekend. It's just Pilates weekend with her landlord.Abby finds the residue from the Brewer fire was the same as in the other fires.
The magazine locker was right below where the fire ignited. If the room had gone, it could have sunk the whole ship. Instead the tanks in the machine room ignited and the explosion created a vacuum.
She checked the Swiss-Korean envelope for DNA but doesn't have results yet.
Ziva talks to Abbott's boss, who says Abbott lobbied for the assignment.
Duckie gets choked up thinking about Ramsey's family.
In MTAC, Gibbs and Tony talk to NCIS Special Agent Stan Burley, who's in Naples, Italy and just got the faulty wiring alert. The Benjamin Franklin is coming in to port. He found a thermite device in the warehouse that would resupply the Franklin -- a nuclear aircraft carrier.
Tony and Ziva head to Italy.
Gibbs wakes Abby up in the lab, where she slept on the floor and Mcgee sleep on the computer. They broke the code on the Korean message -- which was a simple code, typed on an English keyboard but printed in Korean. It gave Abbot instructions on when, where and how to attack the Brewer.
Naples, ItalyBurley greets them. The Benjamin Franklin is in port. They swapped the thermite out of the device and the three of them are going undercover on board to wait to see who comes to arm it. There are 32 civilians onboard.
Duckie brings Gibbs his will. Most of his estate is going to the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation.
On the Franklin, Burley and Tony stake out the room with the bomb. Ziva brings food, but Tony's feeling seasick. They see someone approach. A man goes into the room they're guarding and checks his instructions.
Burley waits as the man cuts into a sealed palette, going for the bait. But the man hears something and picks up his knife and hurls it. Burley makes a noise like he's hit.Tony and Ziva go in. They find burley down, but still breathing. His weapon is gone.
The suspect creeps around with Burley's gun. Tony and Ziva close in on him and Tony clocks him with a chain.
In MTAC, Gibbs sees that Burley is OK.
The suspect is Andre Fullerton, a tech rep with an Avionics Communications firm. Gibbs tells Fullerton he has no rights and they're invoking the Patriot Act to fly him to Guantanamo as a terrorist.
Gibbs asks who hired him.
Fullerton says the man's name is Harper Dearing, but Fullerton never met him in person. All he knows is he had a slight Southern drawl. He did it for the money. Gibbs orders Fullerton brought back for trial.
McGee checks Southern Harper Dearings and finds one (Richard Schiff) born in Georgia who is the CEO of Dorado Hills Investments, a venture capital group, and lives in Virginia.
Gibbs sets Abby on comparing his DNA to the code envelope.
Abby finds Gibbs cleaning his weapon in her lab, waiting for her. Dearing had a son in the Navy, she had his DNA compared to the envelope. There's a familial match. Gibbs takes off.
Gibbs and a team head to Dorado Hills Investments to arrest Dearing. Vincent Maple, the company president, greets them. He doesn't know where Dearing is -- he hasn't seen or heard from him in over a year.
In the office, Gibbs calls everyone to attention and puts Harper Dearing on their Most Wanted wall.
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Probationary Agent Ned Dorneget gets his implant pulled. The doctor finds it's not actually a regular implant -- it's a listening device."Wait, somebody bugged my mouth?" he says.
Palmer comes up looking for intel on his bachelor party Abby planned. McGee tells him to be up on his hepatitis vaccinations and get a good helmet. Tony suggests kneepads. They don't actually have any idea what she's up to.
Dorneget comes in with his tooth.Abby examines it. Dorneget says it was there for years, but a couple of weeks ago he got a call from a dentist, not his usual one, saying there was a recall on his implant. When he got a popcorn kernel stuck it recently he went to a new guy to have it dealt with.
The tooth bug had a short range, but used the pressure of his chewing to stay charged. It's fancy tech and Abby checks for a patent. She finds ones from 18 months ago filed by Harper Dearing.
They're after Dearing for the arsons exploiting bad ship wiring. Samantha Ryan (Jamie Lee Curtis) shows up with NSA intercepts of Dearing's last communications with the venture capital firm President Vincent Maple.
Tony and Ziva visit Vincent Maple and show him his email from Dearing in which Dearing mentions surfing somewhere he once went with Maple. Maple says it never happened and he's on their side, he suggests Dearing is losing it.
Sam and Gibbs talk to the dentist who put in Dorneget's new implant, Dr. Berman. He says he didn't know there was a bug in the tooth and he doesn't know Dearing, but Sam says he's lying about both things. McGee interrupts, saying Dearing is on the phone for Berman.
They take him to MTAC. Dearing gives Berman permission to answer their questions, but says he's calling to speak to Gibbs. Dearing says "this is all his fault."
Tony and Ziva come in to see agents sweeping the whole building for bugs. They want to know how he knew Berman was there and how he broke through MTAC's firewall.Sam thinks he's a sociopathic paranoid narcissist.
Palmer walks by on the phone with Brinna, telling her he doesn't know why Abby asked him what kind of tattoo he wants to get.
McGee reports Berman says he was threatened to implant the bug and got $10,000 for it. He has a description of the man who approached him.
Sam checks that Gibbs knows it's not really his fault, although it seems clear Dearing believes it.
Palmer goes to Abby, trying to convince her to postpone his bachelor party. She says she already put down a non-refundable deposit on 50 gallons of scented body lotion.
She runs Dearing's face through facial recognition and gets a live hit. He's in a Navy yard sitting openly on a park bench.NCIS locks it down but doesn't find him. He came in with only a briefcase.
They see he left a flower on the bench. Gibbs sees it came from a nearby bush and walks over. He finds a model of his boat, down to the name and rudder.
Later that night, Sam admits she likes Dearing's style. "Of course you do, it's yours," Gibbs says.
Gibbs and Ryan try to suss out his motivation. She mentions that Dearing's son was killed in a suicide attack on a Navy ship. There was an early warning system that could have stopped it, but it hadn't been replaced yet on his ship.
Sam thinks Dearing is trying to teach the Navy a lesson. She thinks Dearing has more plans for Gibbs.
Gibbs asks Sam how long she's known about Dearing's son. He's frustrated again about her keeping secrets."You want me to let you in, then let me in," she says.
Tony calls with a report that they found the car of the guy who bullied Berman. It's registered to Frederick Fountain, a former cop who served time for taking bribes. Tony thinks he interrupted Gibbs with Sam.
Gibbs pops in the back seat.
They see Fountain and chase him. They catch him quickly and he says he'll tell them anything, even about the next attack, if they get him out of there.But then two shots ring out and Fountain is shot dead.
Down in the morgue, Duckie tells Palmer that Abby asked to borrow the rotary saw for his bachelor party.
Abby found traces of RDX explosive from under Fountain's fingernails. The bullets shattered on impact.Duckie shows Gibbs a Watcher Fleet microchip he found in Fountain's arm that was recently put in.
The microchip is the same one that was in Agent Leven's arm last year. The info on it is in code. It shows balance sheets from Dearing's company showing purchase of building materials.
Gibbs and Ryan bring a hard copy of it to Maple. He says they have no record of the purchases. He looks at the items and suggests Dearing is either building something for the spaceship or Naval artillery shells.
Ryan thinks of something. One of the weaknesses the Watcher fleet found was that some guns that used RDX could explode if the right artillery wasn't used. They could take out half of their fleet just during exercises.
Back in the lab, Abby runs simulations that show how bad the explosions could be. Dorneget tells Gibbs he found an encryption key while doing data entry on his tooth bug. The key is how Dearing hacked MTAC. They traced it to a cell phone.
Gibbs dials the number and Dearing answers, knowing it's Gibbs.Gibbs asks Dearing what his son would think of what he's doing. Abby runs a trace. Dorneget recognizes the address from the shipping manifest. They think they've found his warehouse.
The team heads there, guns drawn, but finds an empty warehouse with just a security guard inside. He's pushing a briefcase full of cash.
Back at the office, they send out alerts about the defective artillery. The security guard has no record, but he had $1 million in cash.
In interrogation, he insists he had no idea what was in it. He got a small case once a month and a truck would come pick it up. He got a text to deliver the case to an address tonight.
They check the guard's cell and finds it's registered to a Dearing holding company. They want to use the guard for a sting and have him deliver the case as planned.
Abby comes in in a circus master of ceremonies sequined outfit and mustache, ready for the bachelor party. They think it's canceled, but Gibbs says it's not.
Cut to the team doing shots in a bar and playing quarters. Gibbs is winning, naturally. Ziva watches over the guard out on the street as the guys drink it up inside.
Jimmy makes a toast. "As Nathaniel Hawthorne once said: 'Let man tremble at the hand of woman....' Blah, blah, blah -- alcohol is fun."
Tony checks with Dorneget; they're drinking apple juice. Palmer stumbles. The limo pulls up outside and they converge on it. They find Vincent Maple inside.
Back at interrogation. They found him with no bags, a fake ID and a one-way ticket to Morocco. He insists he doesn't know where Dearing is.
He confesses there was no equipment, he set up a dummy account to siphon money out of Dearing's company. "I was embezzling, that's it," he says.He reminds them the faulty artillery was Ryan's idea and he just went with it.
"The real question you should be asking is how'd you get a copy of my books?" he asks.
Back in the office, they go back over Fountain. They found his car thanks to a tip, which they traced to Dearing. He wanted them to find Fountain and the chip.They think Dearing knew Maple was embezzling and used it to send them on a wild goose chase.
Gibbs goes to Sam with a stern face.He wonders if her defective artillery theory was really a mistake. She asks him what he's insinuating. He gets frustrated that he can read everyone but her. For such an intuitive introvert, she knows it drives him nuts.
Gibbs gets a text from Dearing saying "Check." He calls Tony.Director Vance has disappeared.
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Teams go over Director Vance's abandoned car. They're nowhere near his house and his phone is in the car.
His security man Wallace tells Gibbs that Vance insisted on driving himself home but he seemed fine.
Leon wakes up in an open casket in a tomb, lying next to a desiccated corpse with a note pinned to it: "Your king is vulnerable."
Gibbs checks in with Sec-Nav. McGee checks all street cameras.
Sam Ryan (Jamie Lee Curtis) drops by. "Are you just visiting or do you already know something I don't?" Gibbs asks.She's just there to offer her help.
Vance calls Gibbs.
They go pick him up. He remembers leaving the Navy yard and being flagged down by three people claiming car trouble. He was injected with something.
The land belongs to the Whitting family, the body belonged to a man who died on the same ship as Dearing's son 10 years ago.
There was a giant jawbone from the equine family in the tomb. Sam recognizes it as Biblical. Sampson in Judges 15. "And he finds a new jawbone of an ass, put forth his hand.... slew a thousand men."
Duckie and Palmer go over the well-preserved remains of Whitting. He and Evan died in a terrorist attack against a weak section of the hull. Whitting was on the same deck where the bomb hit.
Duckie suggests if Whitting was the first to suffer, Dearing might be pointing at who will suffer next: NCIS.
Upstairs, Tony wonders about the chances of them making it to Palmer's wedding.Gibbs wants an old case file from 12 years ago involving a prank.
Gibbs drops by Sam's office and finds her son Parker there alone. Parker immediately grills him on how much Gibbs likes his mom, on a scale of 1 to 10.Parker knows about Gibbs' wood working.Sam comes in.
Gibbs wants more on Evan Dearing, Harper's son. He wants to try to exploit Harper's weaknesses.
In the lab, Abby is overcome by the idea that they might all miss Palmer's wedding.She got DNA from the horse jawbone and narrowed it to two thoroughbred breeds.
McGee and Tony pour through old case files for the prank. It involved a "steamy liaison" between a male and female officer, someone taped it and played it for the whole crew. The guy who filmed it was discharged, but the others were reassigned. One was Evan Dearing.
Harper pulled strings to have his record expunged. After the prank, Evan was reassigned to the ship where he was killed. They think Dearing is targeting NCIS now in retaliation.
The case agent, Larson, is retired now and lives on a horse farm.
Gibbs and the team reach the farm and Gibbs notices the horses are spooked. There are groceries in the truck and the engine is warm.Gibbs calls out to Larson.
His house explodes.
Later, with crews on the site, Larson's body is taken from the smoldering house. They find a video camera nearby. It filmed them arriving and looking around and then Harper Dearing turned it on himself and says that some people need to learn from their mistakes.
He claims that by pointing out the wiring flaws and "sacrificing" a few he has saved thousands of lives. But now that he's done that, it's about payback for his son.
Gibbs watches the tape with Vance. The Navy is on red alert.Gibbs plans to talk to Dearing's ex-wife.
Vance is burning from Dearing grabbing him. Gibbs urges him to hit back hard.
Downstairs, they learn that after Evan died Victoria Dearing sought counseling and Harper started drinking and became violent. They divorced two years later.
Abby politely interrupts and asks for everyone if there's any chance they'll make it for Jimmy's wedding. Gibbs' silence is their answer.
Down in the morgue, Jimmy asks Duckie if he should cancel the wedding. Duckie essentially tells him that would be letting the terrorists win. Duckie promises to be there.
Gibbs talks to Victoria Dearing. She remembers Harper was angry at the Navy and thinks he believes someone has to pay for taking away their son.
Gibbs visits Sam again. She shows him her super fancy computer, programmed for getting in people's heads. She's working up Dearing, including finding people he might trust or distrust.
One suggested ally is Jonathan Cole (Scott Wolf) from the Phantom Eight. He must have sold Dearing the microchip. She knows Dearing tried to hire Cole at one point, she suggests setting Cole up to get freed from prison and work for Dearing now.
Dearing calls Sam.He knows about her ex-husband "where he is and how he got there."
We see he's outside a boy's prep school as he starts talking to her about her son Parker.
Later, cops surround Parker's school. Dearing didn't go near him and that concerns Sam; he's finding their vulnerabilities.
At the office, Palmer worked through the night with Duckie and they're getting on a plane in two hours.
Ziva got him fine Israeli cotton sheets, McGee got him a long range video camera for when he's stuck at work and Tony gives him a re-gifted DVD.
Cole is brought in. Gibbs and Sam sit with him in interrogation as he enjoys freedom potato chips. They show him photos of the wiring fires and point out he made Dearing's acts possible by selling him the microchip. He claims to know things about Dearing, but Sam can tell he's lying.
They tell him they want him to go work for Dearing. He jumps at the chance to be free for awhile, saying the fact he could die isn't the catch, it's the fun.
They arrange to make it look like Cole escaped. Tony also told Victoria about him, thinking she knows more than she's saying and might contact Harper.
Abby reports that the accelerant at Larson's house doesn't match any of the other fires. Gibbs gets an urgent text from Sam and goes to her office.
Her ex was released from prison today on a bogus technicality. She says he was in prison for a good reason, "he hurts people."
She's afraid he'll come after her. She thinks Dearing bought the judge and played her. She fights back tears as she tells Gibbs she's taking her son and leaving.He tells her leaving isn't the answer, but she goes.
At night in the office, Tony and Ziva try to convince themselves they're not sorry to miss Palmer's wedding. Tony doesn't know what he'd do if he had to face all the trappings of a wedding."Elope?" Ziva asks.
Dearing just emailed Cole. "Where Golden Eagle's rest tomorrow at 8 a.m."Golden Eagles are retired Navy pilots, they're talking about a coffee shop where they go.
Jimmy drops by Breena's room on the morning of their wedding. He tells her he feels like he should be back at NCIS helping them. He suggests they get married now and then he'll go back and after they'll have a big party and go on a honeymoon. She agrees.
NCIS stakes out the coffee shop. Cole sits down for coffee and the waitress gives him something from a messenger. It's a cell phone.It rings.
Dearing tells Cole to tell Gibbs that he was never really interested in Director Vance. He was interested in justice.
Back in the office, they try to figure out Dearing's next move. They figure he drove Sam away so she couldn't guess. Vance is on his way to meet with Sec-Nav.
They replay the background audio from Dearing's call to Cole and hear bells from the Navy chapel and other noises outside their own building. He's nearby.
Gibbs recaps what was found in Vance's car. Nothing. But they didn't strip it down. Dearing was after Vance's car, not Vance.It's parked right outside NCIS.
Gibbs calls for evacuation and the bomb squad.Cole reminds him he worked bomb disposal. Gibbs takes a minute to decide if he can trust Cole and decides he can.
Outside, people run in all directions. Gibbs undoes Cole's cuffs. They open the car.
Inside, McGee downloads his computer on a flash drive and Vance barks at him to get out.
Cole and Gibbs tear the car apart.
Ziva and Tony clear the building inside.
Outside, Gibbs sees a small red wire under the upholstery. They slice it open and find tons of C4.Cole tells Gibbs to get clear."It's not the danger, it's the fun," Cole tells him.
Gibbs sees Abby inside nearby in her lab and goes inside.
Cole doesn't have a chance to get started before the phone rings with the message "For Evan." The car explodes.
Gibbs throws himself over Abby in the lab, McGee is totally exposed upstairs as the windows blast in and Tony and Ziva are thrown to the floor together in the elevator.
Walking along the beach alone, Duckie gets a call.
"Dear God, how many?" He says he'll be there right away. He starts to have trouble speaking, he falls to his knees, clearly having a heart attack or stroke. He falls, not breathing, in the surf.
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(Previously: Harper Dearing, whose son was killed in a terrorist attack, strikes the Navy and NCIS. He plants a car bomb outside NCIS which explodes. On a beach somewhere, Duckie drops when he hears the news.)
May 15, 2012Duckie gets checked out in the hospital. He had a heart attack. Palmer found him on the beach and is still there. Duckie asks about NCIS, but Palmer hasn't been able to reach anyone.
Outside NCIS at the scene of the bomb blast, crews go over the wreckage and tend to the wounded and dead. Abby is OK, so is Gibbs. Vance, too.
The Secretary of the Navy is there. He wants a plan of action. The FBI will be assisting in the search of Dearing. Gibbs goes to find the rest of his team.
Ziva and Tony are stuck in the elevator. Ziva sits on Tony's shoulders and bangs on the ceiling, but it's jammed shut. The elevator slips.Tony's sweating, it's hot in there.Ziva gets a call from her father, offering to help find Harper Dearing.
Gibbs checks out the office, with papers everywhere and the ceiling dropped in places. There's dust everywhere and McGee is in a daze.He mentions he's hot and Gibbs notices there's a giant piece of glass sticking out of McGee's side.
In his hospital bed, Duckie insists on getting back to DC. He tries to say he's capable of assisting, but realizes he's not. He tells Palmer to go back and help. "They need you more," Duckie says.
Agent Fornell joins Vance, Gibbs and Sec-Nav, on the phone with the president. McGee is fine with a few stitches.
Sec-Nav explains they've been instructed to locate Harper Dearing and pursue him with "extreme prejudice." Failure is not an option.
Still stuck in the elevator, Ziva and Tony think of worse cowkers they could be stuck with. Then Ziva realizes one of them could be dead.Finally, rescuers pry the doors open.
At Gibbs' house, he and Fornell share beers. Gibbs thinks Dearing hurt his "family."Luckily, Fornell brought canolli. Gibbs worries about what they do if Dearing just disappears, but Fornell is determined to go after him.
Meanwhile, on a street somewhere, Dearing watches news footage of his attack on TV screens in an electronic store. A woman walks up to him and says the attack makes her feel lucky. She introduces herself as Lorraine and asks if he wants to go somewhere. She takes him home, climbs onto her bed and turns on slow jams.He excuses himself to the restroom.
Then she takes the gun out from under her covers and lets the FBI SWAT team in the front door. They open fire on the bathroom, but it's empty.
She sees a ringing phone in a bag on the floor, counting down and saying "you're dead in..."The room explodes.
The next morning, Fornell is wounded over the loss of his team.Ziva points out Dearing is no longer taunting them, they're taunting him. Gibbs gets a look"Uh, I know that look. That's the stay-up-all-night-take-one-for-the-team-I-got-a-plan look," Tony says to Gibbs.Gibbs wants to take the fight to Dearing and make him keep playing.
The news says the FBI arrested Victoria Dearing, Harper's ex-wife. Gibbs tells Vance that they have her under protection out of state.
Vance is worried. He feels guilty that he drove the car with the bomb into the NCIS yard. Gibbs notes that Dearing wants Vance to be wracked with just that guilt and he has to be stronger than that.
Abby sweeps up angrily in her lab. She's upset and a little freaked out.
In the office, Tony asks Gibbs if he's talked to Samantha Ryan since the attack.
Vance summons Gibbs into MTAC. McGee is there. Harper is on the monitor and angry about them accusing his wife. He thinks he's a whistleblower, exposing flaws.
McGee traces his signal as Dearing tells them there's no better player than a man who has nothing to lose.Dearing is parked in an abandoned parking lot off Route 9. They check with Sec-Nav and send the coordinates to a team. They check satellite imagery and see the car is hot with one person in it. They watch and listen as the team surrounds the car. It's explodes before they reach it. They think Dearing just blew himself up.
In the morgue, Palmer goes over the remains from the car, freaking out from lack of sleep and no Duckie. Abby lurks. Gibbs, Vance and Fornell come in for an update. He gave a tissue sample and Abby is lurking outside awaiting DNA results.She reports it's a 50% match. They think they have him.
July 10, 2012Duckie comes back to NCIS, which is still being cleaned up. He hears the doubt in Gibbs' voice when he mentions Dearing's death.
Inside, Joann Dearing, Harper's sister-in-law, drops by. She's been traveling in Europe as a personal assistant.Gibbs talks to her. No one claimed Harper's body.Her husband Lawrence was Harper's brother, he died four months ago of a heart attack. He was buried in the private family ceremony. "So Harper had access to his brother's remains?" Gibbs asks.
Down in the morgue, Duckie notices tiny fractures in the victim's ribs, evidence of CPR, like what would be performed on a heart attack victim. The body is Lawrence Dearing.Harper Dearing is still alive.
Upstairs, Abby explains that Dearing rigged the car so the body would be warm and look alive. They put out BOLOs on Harper.
Tony looks into Joann Dearing's finances. She has a new $250,000 in her bank account. Days after the car exploded her cell phone made calls in rural West Virginia, where she also purchased gas.
Gibbs has her brought back in. She plays dumb but Gibbs yells. She tells him that after Harper was reported dead, she came from work to find him in her living room.Gibbs asks where Dearing is.
Cut to teams storming a cabin in the woods. There are barrels of thermite, photos of Gibbs and his team and plans for all his bombs.Gibbs thinks Dearing wanted them to know he was finished.
Tony notices a trap door in the floor, it's how he got out.
Down in his empty basement, Gibbs takes measurements. Vance drops by. Forensics linked everything in the tunnel to Dearing. Gibbs has an idea, but he knows Vance won't like it. He offers to go after Dearing alone.
Gibbs explains that it's not about bombs and ships anymore, Dearing knows what he did and he knows what has to happen next. He's waiting for Gibbs in the house where he and Victoria raised Evan, where his important memories are. He wants them to be his last. Vance agrees to let Gibbs go. "For the record, if anything should happen?" Vance asks."Kill him," Gibbs says."Glad to."
Back at NCIS, Gibbs packs up. Ziva is infuriated that Gibbs is going alone. He tells them to watch out for each other.
Gibbs drives up to Dearing's house in his pick-up. He goes inside and hears Dearing's son's voice coming from the cassette player.
Dearing casually brews coffee for Gibbs as he arrives. He offers him Scotch.
"I'm glad you came, Gibbs. I was hoping you'd figure it out, eventually," Dearing says. He compares his feelings to Gibbs' for his late daughter.
Dearing thinks he and Gibbs are a lot a like. He knows what Gibbs did for his family and that Gibbs has a job to do.Dearing turns his back on Gibbs and stands by a window sill with a gun on it."Do I have regrets? Yea, some. But maybe things happen for a reason," Dearing says.
Gibbs takes out a knife, Dearing goes for the gun. He turns on Gibbs and Gibbs stabs him through the gut.
September 25, 2012Back in the NCIS yard, Gibbs checks out the new memorial to the May attacks. We hear Evan and Harper on a tape, Evan talking about wanting to protect the country."I'm really proud I'm doing this, dad," Evan says."Yea, so am I," says Harper.
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Abby looks around the empty morgue late at night, trying to convince herself not to be freaked out. Then she steps through the door and freaks out. She wakes up on the slab, about to be cut open.
Then she actually wakes up at her desk. It's 3 a.m., she calls Gibbs. "It happened again," she tells him.
Tony flirts with the Navy's facilities manager, Judy. She's overseeing the remodel and he thinks she smells fantastic. He's about to ask her out when Ziva interrupts, asking if they can get some new improvements. Judy agrees to look into a new paint color.
Miles Wolf, crisis counselor, interlopes. He's there for mandatory psych evaluations. The team decides they're fine.
Upstairs, Wolf tells Vance and Gibbs that everybody in NCIS seems to be doing well, except the armory. They're mourning "Midge" who evacuated the day of the bombing and hasn't been seen for four months. Gibbs tells Wolf to start with Abby and her nightmares.
Gibbs gets a call, they found Midge's car.
The team goes to the car recovery site, she was in her car submerged in a pond. Duckie shows up, off work. He doesn't have medical clearance to be back at work yet.
They confirm it's Midge with her photo ID. They wonder if she sped into the lake on her way from NCIS, but the missing person's report says she made it home. Palmer finds a bullet wound in her stomach.
Back at NCIS, Tony reviews paint samples.Midge Watkins was a retired Marine captain serving as an NCIS administrator. She has a daughter, Grace, stationed in San Diego, who's flying in.
Wolf tries to talk to Abby in the lab, but she can't even say the word "bombing."She refuses to talk about her nightmares.
Gibbs goes to the morgue and finds Duckie there. Palmer reports a lot of defensive wounds on the body. Gibbs tells Duckie to go home.
Ziva and Tony talk to Phyllis and Jon in the armory about the last day they saw Midge. The armory walls are still riddled with bullet holes from the munitions that exploded after the bomb. Jon has a scar from where he was hit by shrapnel.
They wonder if Midge was hit and didn't know it. Gibbs suggests getting a list of armory supplies and comparing the bullets to what hit Midge.
Gibbs checks on Abby in the garage, he asks about the shrink. She doesn't want to talk to a stranger. Gibbs is willing to listen as long as it's "short" and "nothing too deep." Abby remembers worrying after the bombing that she'd lost some friends. Lying on the autopsy table in her dream makes her feel alone, like she has no family. Gibbs asks about her family, including her biological brother, Kyle, who doesn't know about her.Abby finds a bullet in the car, Midge was shot at point blank range in the car.
Ziva talks to Midge's daughter, Grace. Midge texted from home after the bombing, and said she'd call and didn't. Grace says everyone loved her mom, she was especially supportive of women in the workplace. That lead to some "typical male grumbling about playing favorites."
Back at NCIS, Ziva tells Tony that Midge thought he was occasionally annoying.
Judy comes back, Vance rejected the paint change request. Tony asks her out and she tells him she's taken, she thought they were "sport flirting."
Wolf comes through making small talk about the evaluations. Vance loudly objects and tells the team to get to work on Midge.
Ziva finds that a job applicant named Craig Wilson filed a grievance against Midge after she hired Phyllis instead, but it was thrown out five months ago, around the time of the bombing.Wilson was discharged for bad conduct five years ago and is unemployed.
Wolf intercepts Gibbs for his eval. Gibbs asks if he thinks family might help Abby. He says it could. Abby calls Gibbs away.
Down in the lab, Abby tells Gibbs the bullet that killed Midge is "nasty," it's covered in 60 year old mold. Gibbs encourages Abby to seek out Kyle.
Tony thinks he's unfocused since the bombing, like half of him is still "stuck in that elevator." Ziva and Tony pay a visit to Craig Wilson, who runs when they introduce themselves. Ziva tackles him and he drops a box full of guns.
Tony and Ziva talk to Craig in interrogation. He calls Ziva a "Feminazi." He calls Tony her "lovesick boyfriend" and compares it to his interview with Midge and someone else in the interview.Ziva rules out all of Craig's weapons as the murder weapon.
In the morgue, Palmer tells Gibbs that he found an allergic reaction in Midge's lungs but can't make sense of it. Gibbs calls Duckie.
Back in the armory, Jon admits he and Midge had a fling a few years back after she lost her husband. He and Phyllis look at the photos of the old guns that could be the murder weapon. They both offer to look into people who might know more about them.
Ziva goes to visit her biological brother Kyle at the pet adoption agency where he works. He's not there and she turns to leave. He finds her on the street. He remembers meeting her a year ago and thinks they had a connection.
McGee gets a call from a gun dealer in Philly who sold a similar gun six months ago. A few hours ago, the dealer got a call from the buyer begging him not to give out his name. McGee got his address, it's near the pond where Midge was found.
They head to the apartment and find Jon, the armory employee. He admits to having an old gun but says he still has it. He opens up his case but it's not there.
Duckie and Palmer call Gibbs to report she had a severe allergic reaction to a chemical that's used in soaps, detergents and colognes. Jon says he couldn't have done it because he was getting his shrapnel wound stitched up.
They notice a smell in the air, not cologne, but fancy perfume. Tony recognizes it. Jon says it's his girlfriend's, she saw his gun in the box a few hours ago. He says she was with the hospital all night, except two hours when she went to get him a clean shirt.
Jon remembers he said some things that night about how the bombing made him realize how much Midge meant to him.
Tony finds Judy throwing Jon's gun into the pond. He cuffs her and listens to make jealous excuses.
Back in the morgue, Duckie busts Palmer. He knows Palmer didn't need his help and tells him he doesn't need his charity.
Wolf turns his report over to Vance, pointing out that Vance didn't have his eval. Vance wishes he could turn time back to before, which explains refusal to change the paint color.Vance is still feeling guilty for driving his car with a bomb in it to the yard, and driving his kids around that morning.Wolf assures him everyone is safe and no one is blaming him.
Gibbs opens a beer at home and Abby busts in with Kyle. Kyle hugs Gibbs, thanking him. Gibbs opens beers for everyone, but they find Abby asleep on the couch.
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David McCallum (Ducky) goes to Arlington Cemetery to request the exhumation of the body of Commander Bruce Roberts, a man whom Ducky had performed an autopsy on over 12 years previously. Ducky watches the exhumation of the casket and signs for the release of body. When the gentleman in charge at Arlington asks Ducky for the case number, he says that he "... never got the 27B 'stroke' 6 ..." with the official NCIS case number. Ducky says that he will have to "have a word" with Brian Dietzen (Mr. Palmer) and asks if he can have the form faxed over.
The gentleman agrees to release the body to NCIS since Ducky is a "... repeat customer ...", and he says in jest, "... though I sure hope you haven't taken up grave robbery as a hobby." [This is a subtle nod to an earlier McCallum role as 'Dr. Henry Clerval' (qv.) in the 1973 television movie, 'Frankenstein: The True Story' (qv.) in which Clerval and his protege, Viktor Frankenstein, were grave robbers.]
At NCIS, Sean Murray (Tim McGee) is lusting after a "life recorder" worn like a necklace that allows the wearer to take photos every few moment, and says he has been chosen as a Beta tester. Cote dePablo (Ziva David) comments that after the last three months some moments are better left unrecorded, and Michael Weatherly (Tony DiNozzo) agrees.
Tony starts commenting on how Mark Harmon (Leroy Jethro Gibbs) would react to McGee's having a life recorder, not realizing that Gibbs is standing behind him. Tony's comments earn him the first Gibbs-slap of Season 10. Gibbs then dispatches the team to investigate the scene for the murder of the week, a dead sergeant in Brooklyn and tells them that he will meet them there.
In autopsy, Palmer balks at sending over the "27B" and tells Ducky the exhumed body has to be returned. Ducky replies, "It's a corpse, Mr. Palmer, not a wedding present." Gibbs walks in on the conversation and dismisses Palmer so that he can speak with Ducky. Gibbs doesn't take Ducky seriously at first, saying that Ducky's "bored" and reminds Ducky that, technically, he isn't the ME.
Gibbs does give Ducky a chance to explain his reason for the exhumation. Ducky tells Gibbs about having performed the autopsy on Cmdr. Bruce Roberts. Ducky said his determination that the death was accidental didn't sit well with him, and he wanted to take a second look. At the time, based on the condition of Cmdr. Roberts' liver, it appeared that he drank himself to death. Ducky then shows Gibbs a recent obit for Landon Roberts -- the commander's father -- who died from a rare genetic liver disorder. The commander would have had the same disorder, and Ducky explained to Gibbs that there is a class of poisons that would mimic fatal alcohol intoxication in people with that condition. If Ducky had known about Roberts' liver condition, he would have handled the autopsy differently. For that reason, he thinks it is possible that the commander could have been murdered.
At the current crime scene, the team finds that the dead sergeant had plans to fly to Malta and was found by the taxi driver who would have driven him to the airport. Instead of continuing with the investigation, the three agents corner Palmer before Gibbs arrives, wanting to know about Ducky's dead guy. On the lookout, Tony tells Ziva and McGee to "look sharp" as he sees Gibbs approach. Knowing what is going on, Gibbs tells them that Ducky is "working on a cold case", and then prompts them to get on with the present case.
Palmer determines that the time of death was around midnight. Since the skin is pink, it would indicate carbon monoxide poisoning. The team also finds $50,000 cash on the dead sergeant.
Upon returning to NCIS, the new case pertains to a Sgt. Hill who was assigned to the Marine Corps Security Force regiment, providing security to high value targets. He has no record of trouble, but was not authorized for travel, so it appears that he was going UA.
In the lab, Abby tells Gibbs his retroactively approving Ducky's exhumation was kind, and then tells Gibbs that Ducky was right about the commander. She did find traces of a poison synthesized from the oleander plant. Abby also tells Gibbs that she had checked the laptop of Sgt. Hill and found that one of the last things Sgt. Hill had looked at prior to his death was a copy of Ducky's exhumation order.
Gibbs and McGee talk to Ducky outside the building, telling Ducky that the new case overlaps his cold case. They need to know who Ducky had talked to about the exhumation, and they need his files on Roberts. Ducky agrees to turn over the information to them for the investigation. Ducky believes he's been side-lined again until Gibbs cites Rule 38: "Your case, your lead."
Back at NCIS, Gibbs tells the agents that Ducky has point on the case. They then brief Ducky about Roberts, who was an avionics instructor in Annapolis. Roberts had applied several times, but couldn't get into NASA's flight training program. At the time of Roberts death, he was a widower who came from money who was survived by a daughter. Ducky asks about her, and Ziva tells him that the daughter is on her way. In the meantime, Ducky tells the team look back through his old files to see what else they can find.
Ziva accompanies Ducky to the meeting with the commander's daughter. Surprisingly, the daughter opens with: "He's dead because I killed him." Actually, the daughter was supposed to stop over to see her father the night he died, but was detained at work. She said her father wasn't a big drinker, he just had a bad day: he'd just been rejected again by NASA. Ducky tells her that it now appears her father may have been murdered. Showing her a picture of Sgt. Hill, the commander's daughter says that she doesn't recognize him. Ducky promises the daughter that they will find out what happened to her father. After she leaves, Ziva points out to Ducky that the daughter had inherited $14 million from her father and that she might be the killer.
In autopsy, Palmer briefs Gibbs and Ducky, telling them about finding old chemical burns on Sgt. Hill's hands consistent with burns from the poison that killed Cmdr. Roberts. Hill is now the prime suspect in Roberts' death. It now looks as though Hill was running to keep from being tagged for Roberts' murder. While they're in autopsy, the radiation alarm goes off in Abby's lab, and Gibbs rushes to her.
As Gibbs enters the lab, Abby is already on the phone with security, telling them that it is a false alarm. Abby tells Gibbs that she found dust on Roberts' jacket that is a radioactive substance called JSC1, found on fake moon rocks. The JSC1 had set off the alarm. Abby then gives Gibbs the name of a man who would know about JSC1 and the moon rocks.
Rene Auberjonois (Dr. Felix Blackwell), is a NASA scientist who identifies JSC1 as having been made by Johnson Space Center for create fake moon rocks to be used in lunar engineering studies. Blackwell told them the irradiated stuff was supposed to be disposed of since it could be used to make a dirty bomb.
Back at NCIS, Ducky recaps with the team Hill's killing Roberts and the information about JSC1. The answers raise more questions including why Roberts would be in possession of a substance that could be used to build dirty bombs, and McGee and Tony pay a visit to Roberts' CO.
Tony and McGee find Roberts' CO at the firing range. Tony tries to talk to her, but the CO perceives Tony as wanting to trash Roberts and refuses to tell him anything. She turns back to the target, and McGee steps up beside her. McGee fires six shots straight into the head of the target in front of him. He gets the CO's attention and she is willing to talk to him. The CO calls Roberts her finest officer. When McGee points out that everyone has some imperfection, the CO says that Roberts didn't take rejection well, and Roberts made some veiled threats against the DOD after his third rejection for flight school and NASA. She recognized the threats as Roberts' venting and knew that he would not cause any harm. When McGee mentions that there are no letters in Roberts' file, the CO tells McGee she kept the letters out of Roberts' file, but acknowledges that she kept copies of them.
In the lab, Abby explains that Hill's carbon monoxide detectors were disabled by a virus that infected the system that was triggered remotely. She also says that she found some emails on Roberts' old computer, arranging a meet with Hill to buy something, and that Roberts was really paranoid about the police. In a later email, Roberts threatened to turn Hill into the Feds. With the "dirty bomb" information, they wonder if Roberts and Hill were part of a WMD smuggling ring.
That evening, Palmer shows up at Gibbs' house. Palmer starts telling Gibbs that he thinks Ducky is "losing it". Ducky had yelled at him and was issuing orders like "Atilla the Hun". Gibbs drops what he has in his hand and steps aside. Palmer can now see Ducky sitting in the corner of the basement. Palmer nervously tries to explain himself, "That ..., that was just ...." Ducky interrupts, saying, "... wishing you weren't here ...." Palmer wishes them a good evening and makes a quick exit.
As Palmer leaves, Ducky says Palmer is "... managing quite admirably, but he is slightly overwhelmed by his new position." Ducky then frets about the way things are going with the case and that he is '... not up to the task." He finally tells Gibbs, "Funny ..., I was dismayed that the world could get on without me. Now it seems ... well ..., it just might be better off." Before Gibbs can respond, his phone rings. Abby has found an email from another buyer.
Gibbs heads out to follow up on Abby's lead. When Gibbs arrives, he finds Tony laughing at McGee. At first, McGee says it's nothing, then explains to Gibbs that he was mistaken about being picked as a beta tester for the life recorder. Tony chimes in, "It was no mistake 'cause you've gotta have a life to get a life recorder."
Getting back to business, the guys tell Gibbs that they have traced the email from a "DF" to a cell phone, which led to a PO box, which led them then to the building across the street. Ziva then walks up behind McGee after having checked the back of the building for an entry.
Tony and Gibbs head inside through the front entrance, with Ziva and McGee entering the back of the building. Inside, the music is blaring, and they find an aged British rocker. His posters cover the walls.Michael des Barres (Del Finney) identifies himself. Del Finney is a one-hit wonder from the 80s and is now the maintenance man for the building where he was found.
The team takes Finney to NCIS for interrogation. Gibbs hands Ducky the file, and they enter the interrogation room. Tony, standing outside interrogation says flatly, "This should be entertaining."
Ducky starts off by calling Finney by his real name. He replies, "Finney ..., Del Finney." Then Ducky shows him the photo of Hill and asks, "Do you know this man?" Finney denies knowing him. Ducky doesn't call Finney a liar, but says, "Oh really? I can see the carotid artery pulsing in your neck. The moment this photo appeared, your heart rate shot up to ... oh ..., I'd estimate 130."
Gibbs then asked what Finney bought from the man. "I don't know what you're talkin' about." Finney said he had been keeping a low profile because of fans. Finney tells them about his popularity and to having people on his doorstep wanting an autograph to which Ducky replies, "Or looking for payments on overdue bills? You owe a lot of people a lot of money. Were you hiding from fans ..., or where you hiding from creditors?" Ducky then takes a more empathetic approach after again using the man's real name, Ducky says, "Yeah, Finney ... Del Finney ... It must be really hard for you ..., I mean ..., so much talent ..., the adulation ..., and now it's all over. I mean ..., what happened?" Finney starts talking about the things he bought "... a zoo ..., a lighthouse ..., a few other things ..., ... and then, you know ..., the checks, they stopped comin' in ...".
When Gibbs asks Finney if he bought "... that other stuff ..." from Hill, Finney says he thinks it's time for a lawyer. Ducky says, "Perhaps it is time to see a lawyer ..., on the other hand, maybe it's time to ... (starts singing) "Stand up Johnny, be a man...." Finney picks up the next line, singing, "... Don't run from the truth, even if you can ...:" Finney says to Ducky, "You know my song." Ducky says, "Yes ..., the question is, do you?"
Returning to the NCIS bullpen, Tony walks in singing Ducky's praises. "Hey, you guys ..., you missed it. It was classic ..., beautiful. Ducky ... is an artist." Tony and Gibbs report that Hill was selling moon rocks. McGee comments on how valuable they are and says it's illegal to buy them. Then McGee remembers that about twelve years earlier one of the rocks had been taken from a museum break-in, but it was quietly recovered two years later from a janitor.
Abby confirms that the rock Finney bought is a knock off. Sgt. Hill was running a con. Ducky says from his notes on Finney's interrogation that Hill gave Finney a sample to send to a NASA lab for testing. Abby points out there's no way any NASA scientist would have mistaken the knock-off for the real thing. The question becomes who would have been the person who tested the rocks. The clues lead back to the expert.
Gibbs and Tony pay another visit to Dr. Felix Blackwell, who comes from racketball, but picks up a cane when he sees them. Gibbs grabs the cane, and Tony says to Blackwell, "Did you Keyser Soze us? [A reference to the 1995 movie, 'Usual Suspects' (qv.)] I can't believe I fell for that." Gibbs shows Blackwell Hill's photo. Hill worked security at the NASA rock verification lab when Blackwell ran it. Blackwell asks for his lawyer.
Back at NCIS, Ducky explains to Ziva and McGee how the final pieces to the puzzle came together, pleased with the conclusion of his case. Alluding to another bit of McCallum filmography, Ducky smiles as he says, "La fin de l'affaire" (the end of the affair) [This refers to 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.' (qv.) 1964-1968, in which each episode was called an "affair".] McGee graciously congratulates Ducky and tells him that he is "a natural". Ducky replies that he can't help but think there is something that he's forgotten. Ziva tells him, "It has not forgotten you. Remember the promise that you made." Roberts' daughter has come back to NCIS and thanks Ducky, giving him a hug.
When Roberts' daughter walks away, Gibbs tells Ducky that his fun is over. Instead of letting him finish the paperwork, Gibbs tells Ducky that the only place he's going is back to autopsy. Ducky has been cleared for duty and can return to his job as ME. As Ducky walks away, Ziva says to Gibbs, "We are finally whole again."
In autopsy, Ducky watches Palmer, flustered, talking on the phone, talking about reports he needs to do, the liver he's misplaced and other problems, and then Palmer drops his files in the floor when he sees Ducky. Palmer asks if he can help, and Ducky answers, "No, but maybe I can help you." When Ducky tells him he's cleared for duty, Palmer is relieved.
There's a body that has been sent over from another coroner wanting a second opinion about a subdural hematoma, and Palmer hands Ducky the striker saw. Ducky tells Palmer he should check to see if the fellow was on anti-coagulants, and Palmer leaves. Ducky then looks down at the corpse and says, "... you wait here a moment while I change into something more comfortable."

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A couple does inventory in their seaside convenience store. The man sees the cooler to the water open and thinks it's kids stealing. He goes over and finds a severely dehydrated Marine guzzling water.
At NCIS, Tony keeps the details of his going with McGee on a "double date" a secret, but he tells McGee that they should "go out with the girls again", knowing that the story about their having gone out for drinks has piqued Ziva's curiosity.
Gibbs comes in and tells them to grab their gear for the crime of the week - determining what happened to the crew of Ghost Runner 12, a helicopter that went down four days earlier.
At the scene, the learn that three of the four crew members have survived. Happ, the pilot, is still missing. While talking to the store owner who found the man guzzling water, Gibbs learns that another agent was there before him and finds out that Agent Borin was running the search and rescue.
In the ambulance, one of the crew says the helicopter was hit by a second aircraft.
Ziva is annoyed that McGee and Tony went out without her. Seeing Agent Borin (Diane Neal) behind him, Ziva dares him to pick up the next woman he sees.
Back at NCIS, they run down the information about the helicopter's crew; the persons on board were Chief petty officer Josie Sparks, Co-pilot Lt. Hank Joplin, rescue swimmer, Adam Portis, and the missing pilot,Oliver Happ.
In MTAC, Gibbs and Borin listen to the helicopter's last transmission with Navy Captain Logan Doyle (Rick Worthy) and Navy Lieutenant Commander David Hernandez (Derek Ray) . The radar showed the helicopter went down near the coast of Delaware, but they realize something isn't right since debris washed up off the coast of Maryland. Borin wants to talk to the crew, but Doyle tells Borin and Gibbs that they're not allowed to speak with them until crew has recovered.
The crew members that were found are taken to Walter Reed Medical Center. To get information about the crew, Ducky walks through the hospital as if he's one of the doctors making rounds. Ducky reports to Gibbs that two crew members, Sparks and Joplin, are recovering from acute dehydration and have no significant injuries; the third crew member, Portis, is in a coma. Ducky then hands Gibbs the master key that he covertly acquired so Gibbs can gain access the crew's rooms.
Gibbs talks to Joplin, who says they were flying low - the next thing he knows is that they were bottoms up scrambling for the raft. Joplin tells Gibbs that he's worried about the pilot. Contrary to the report in the ambulance, Joplin says that the only thing the helicopter hit was water.
As they pick up debris on the beach,Tony and McGee dare each other to ask Borin out to settle their bet with Ziva. A scavenger pulls a knife on them, angry that they're taking "his" scrap. Borin pulls her gun on him and calmly explains that they need the debris as evidence. The man, Seamus Quinn, asks Borin out and she accepts.
Continuing to pick up junk on the beach and along the water's edge, McGee notices something caught between some rocks. Tony and McGee walk over and find Happ's lifeless body has washed ashore, with a bullet wound in his head.
Back at NCIS, Tony jokes that he should have asked Ziva out since she said the first woman he saw."Cute, but you did have your chance," she says.
Joplin and Sparks are discharged from the hospital.
The agents learn that the pilot, Happ, has a great service record. Happ is married with a six-year-old son who has been diagnosed with the genetic medical condition, neurofibromatosis (or NF2). Mrs. Happ visits NCIS with her son. She tells Gibbs about her son's condition, and that Happ had promised his son that the boy could wear his flight helmet for Halloween.
In the morgue, Ducky concludes that Happ survived the initial crash. Gibbs wants to know if Happ shot himself, but based on the condition of the body, Ducky can't say for sure.
Borin visits Abby in the garage as she goes through the debris. She hasn't found any helicopter pieces, but the bullet that killed Happ was a .22, not Navy issued. Josie Sparks is the registered owner of a .22-caliber pistol.
Tony sets McGee up to ask Borin out by getting tickets to an 80s cover band concert. McGee fumbles his way through trying to ask Borin out until he is interrupted by Gibbs.
Gibbs goes to interrogation and meets with Josie Sparks and JAG Officer Nora Patel, who represents her. Sparks was disciplined last month for carrying the .22. When Gibbs accuses her of killing Happ, she says Happ was the one trying to kill them.
Happ just found out his son has an incurable disease. He got in a fist fight with a superior officer and she found him drinking on the job another time. On the flight they found him messing with the radar system. He said he couldn't handle going back, facing that his kid was going to die. He put them into a dive. She pulled her gun, but they crashed before she could use it. She calls Happ a coward.
Gibbs meets with Mrs. Happ, who says her husband was fine. He confronts her with empty liquor bottles they found around her house and tells her he tried to commit suicide. She tells Gibbs that Happ didn't commit suicide because he wouldn't give up on their son.
At the beach, Borin calls in a request to get water samples tested in hopes of finding where the helicopter may have gone down based on oil and other residue that might be in the water. Tony and Borin have a brief discussion about their jobs and Borin seems somewhat dissatisfied with her work. Tony tells Borin about having passed up his chance to move up. When she asked why, Tony told her it was because he had "better people" to work with. Quinn then drives up, but Borin dismisses him.
As Quinn leaves, Borin tells Tony she's not going out with Quinn; that she only agreed to because she knew about Ziva's bet. Borin then tells Tony that she thinks it sounds like he has better people to ask out.
At sea, Doyle says he was friends with Happ and would have known if something was wrong, but Doyle doesn't know about the fight Happ started with Hernandez. When asked, Hernandez says it was just over training times and wasn't a big deal.
In the NCIS lab, Abby tells Borin that there is nothing indicative of a crash in the water samples.
Gibbs learns that the Pentagon is about to announce that Happ caused the crash; he then comments on the impact the announcement would have on the Happ family and says they should hold off on making the announcement while the investigation is on-going.
After they receive a call that Portis has regained consciousness, McGee and Tony go talk to him at the hospital. Though Portis is still hooked to a ventilator and might have brain damage, they ask Portis if Happ tried to commit suicide, he shakes his head no.
Back at NCIS, they've been running background on the squadron and found four of them applied for stamps needed to open an off-shore account. Happ was the only one of the crew who hadn't applied, the fourth was Hernandez, who was originally scheduled to fly that night.
Gibbs and McGee talk to Hernandez, who immediately gets caught in an alibi lie. He says they were going to sell the helicopter, but Hernandez bailed and called in sick. Sparks and Joplin watch his confession from the other side of the glass, but still insist they didn't kill Happ.
After talking to Hernandez, Gibbs talks to Joplin. Sparks tells Ziva they faked the crash.
They flew south and landed on a ship waiting to meet them. They were selling the helicopter for $300,000. They told Happ once they were in the air, and Sparks says he went along with it until they landed, and then Happ pulled his weapon on them. Sparks then says that Happ was shot by the ship's captain. She said the captain was supposed to take them back to the "crash" site, but after the murder he disabled the raft transponder and dumped them. Sparks says they deserved it. Sparks then volunteers the name of the ship's captain - Seamus Quinn, the beach scavenger.
The team heads to Quinn's warehouse and he immediately opens fire. Tony and McGee tackle him and find he has a .22 like Sparks, the murder weapon.
Back at NCIS, Borin asks Tony and McGee out for a congratulatory drink. Ziva then busts them for their "double date". The guys had stayed in and played video games. Borin asks Ziva instead, who is glad someone finally asked her. Tony and McGee rush to join them.
Gibbs looks on the news and sees Mrs. Happ and her son. He remembers her asking for her husband's flight helmet for her son. Gibbs picks up the helmet and says, "Game on."
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Two men run from five or six hooded men. The men catch up to both of them and, after being beaten, Joe watches as his friend Torres is dragged away into the night.Tony comes in, delirious from his loud neighbors, who kept him up until 5 a.m. He accidentally took McGee's bag home last night and vice versa. He found his old Instamatic camera and is hoping Abby can develop the film. McGee also found Tony's old shag haircut boarding school picture.Gibbs comes in with the body of the week, a dead Marine downtown.The scene is under a freeway overpass, he's First Lt. Michael Torres. Duckie says it looks like he was beaten to death around 2 to 3 a.m.They get a call of a young white male with blood on his clothes breaking into Torres' apartment.They go there and find Captain Joe Westcott going through Torres' things, hoping to get him back. They break the news to him and take him back to interrogation.Torres and Westcott have known each other since they were kids and served together in Afghanistan for several tours. Westcott was discharged for medical reasons, nerve damage from an explosion that killed four Marines, eight months ago. They wonder why he didn't call 911.Westcott tells Gibbs there were five or six attackers that followed them from a convenience store. He confesses to Gibbs that he ran when he saw Torres being dragged away. He saw one of the attackers. Westcott seems to zone out for a minute and Gibbs snaps him out of it.In the morgue, Duckie explains they found no evidence Torres fought back. He died from his head hitting concrete. They have DNA from one of the attackers.Upstairs, credit card receipts confirm Westcott's story. There's bad surveillance footage of the alley with "ghosts" on the tape from it being re-recorded over many times.Tony comes in, they ID'd a man who left the convenience store after them, Joe Mathis. He was at the convenience store last night and has a record. Westcott doesn't recognize him, but has a finished sketch from the artist of another attacker.Gibbs meets with Torres' fiancée Andrea. She mentions how excited he was that Westcott was in town visiting, he was worried about him.Tony and Ziva go to Joe Mathis' house. He has scratches on his face. When Tony tells him to come with them, he sucker punches Tony. Tony slugs him and draws his gun.In the interview room, Mathis admits he left the convenience store right after Torres and Westcott, but didn't follow them. He says he was at High Points, a strip club, all night. His girlfriend scratched him.Tony calls the club and confirms Mathis was there from 2 to 6 a.m. His DNA doesn't match the sample they have.Gibbs wants them to look into the Marines Torres served with. Gibbs surprises Tony by suggesting they don't need to take another look at Westcott.Joe Westcott's brother Sgt. Evan Westcott comes to NCIS to see his brother. Joe said Evan was overseas, but he's on leave. Evan thinks his brother was just confused. He doesn't want to give Gibbs much information and leaves after Gibbs asks about their dad. Gibbs tells Evan what hotel Joe is at.Down in the lab, Abby has recreated the attack based on multiple attackers and the 10 distinct wounds they found. But based on her measurements she only found two types of impressions, front and back. Two attackers.McGee hasn't been able to find multiple attackers on the tape. They wonder if Joe was lying.Gibbs goes to talk to Joe and finds Evan waiting outside. Joe won't let him in, but he opens the door for Gibbs. Joe's room is a mess and he's been smoking, to the surprise of his brother. Joe asks what Evan is doing there, even though Joe's the one who called him. He covers up his notes when Gibbs tries to look at them. He's written "I J I" several times.Gibbs tells him the evidence says there were two attackers. Joe gets defensive and starts yelling about his "friends" being dead. He throws Gibbs and Evan out, insisting that he knows what he saw.Out in the hall, Evan doesn't understand what's wrong with his brother. Gibbs says Joe is confused, but Evan insists he's fine.Duckie finds Gibbs down in the morgue with Torres' body. He thinks Joe is struggling with the truth. "I suspect that you know all too well the mask that the captain is wearing," Duckie says.Gibbs wonders what Joe's notes with "I J I" could mean. He's worried this attack is bringing back memories of the past one where Westcott was wounded.In the morning, Gibbs tells Tony and Ziva to find out what I-J-I means and to look into the original ambush. They can tell by his clothes that Gibbs never went home last night. They think he's getting too attached to the case because he sees something they don't.Down in the lab, Abby also pulled an all-nighter and they have clear footage of the attack -- there was just one attacker and he matches Westcott's sketch. He's Randall Kersey, he has no military background.Surveillance shows Torres and Westcott following Kersey. They also ID'd a substance from under Torres' fingernails: leather, like the jacket Westcott was wearing. They think Torres was holding him back.Gibbs interview Kersey, a mild-mannered phone company worker. He ID's Westcott as the man who came after him, but says he didn't meant to hurt Torres. They followed him out of a convenience store and Westcott was yelling things that didn't make sense. Westcott attacked him as Torres tried to hold Westcott back. Torres was between them and getting punched from both sides.Kersey says he pushed as hard as he could to get away and Torres hit the ground. Kersey says he panicked and ran.He says Westcott came after him first and was crazy.Back in the office, Ziva can't find Joe Westcott. Evan hasn't seen him. They get a call from the police that Westcott was spotted near the scene of Torres' death.Gibbs and Tony head there and find Westcott carving "I J I" into a wooden door. He doesn't seem to hear them until Gibbs tells him his men need him. "You're not alone," Gibbs says.Westcott drops his knife. "I think I need help," he says.Gibbs shows Westcott the surveillance footage of him attacking Kersey. Gibbs is understanding and sympathetic, saying he had his "head scrambled" once. Westcott says he got confused and thought Kersey was part of the ambush that killed his friends in Afghanistan. He says he didn't know what was real and what wasn't and he was back in the ambush all over again, watching his friend get dragged away. Gibbs encourages him to face his fear.Gibbs sits with Westcott and his brother as he meets with Dr. Pete to talk about PTSD. He's been having nightmares, insomnia and panic attacks for eight months. The doctor assures Joe he's not a burden. Evan apologizes for not helping him sooner. Their dad George joins them.Ziva finds Tony being furtive in the break room. He got his camera developed and it has pictures of him as a young boy with his mom. He doesn't like to talk about her because it's too painful. She introduced him to movies. One picture is outside the last movie she ever took him to, "The Little Prince.""That which is essential is invisible to the eye," Ziva says."Ziva David, did you just quote a movie?""No. I quoted a book that was made into a movie."Back with the psychiatrist, George is not handling things well. He storms out. Dr. Pete encourages Westcott to call anytime.Westcott thanks Gibbs.McGee makes plans for dinner later with Abby, passing on the all-dog talent show.Tony gets the after action report on the ambush, the group responsible was the Ijia rebels, with strong ties to Hamas and Hezbollah. They pull up the surveillance footage of the group from satellite and zoom in on a group of men, including Randall Kersey.Ziva, Gibbs and Tony head to his address on file. It's totally empty. In his storage shed, they find a piece of a building blueprint and equipment to build a bomb. They think he's planning something big.
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Flashback as Captain Joe Westcott comes to get his men before their patrol the night of the ambush. Private Hall talks about how excited he is that his wife is pregnant back home.Later that night during the ambush, Westcott watched helplessly as Hall was dragged away by militants, including Randall Kersey.Back in the present in DC, Gibbs wakes Westcott and his brother and father up in the middle of the night to tell him Joe was right about Kersey. NCIS needs his help. Joe remembers that night at the convenience store, Kersey didn't look like he was there to buy anything.The after action report on the ambush says that Westcott and Torres were inside enemy HQ during the ambush, but Westcott doesn't remember it. Torres told him that's what happened.He remembers Kersey attempting to capture PFC Hall. Paul "McCartney" Patterson was nearby but Westcott doesn't know what he saw. Westcott agrees to go talk to McCartney with Gibbs tomorrow. Westcott's dad George clearly doesn't want to be there and says he has to get back to work in Ohio. Joe's brother Evan volunteers to stay with Joe.At NCIS, they find Kersey grew up in LA and studied philosophy but after study abroad in India, he hooked up with terrorists. His girlfriend's name is Brooke Fenton, she's a caterer.Based on the remnants NCIS found in his apartment, Abby thinks Kersey has two IEDs.Gibbs and the Westcott brothers visit McCartney. He isn't happy to see Westcott and says he needed him "before" but not now.Flashback to the ambush, Westcott remembers McCartney went after Hall to get him from Kersey. He starts running away as he remembers being in enemy HQ, but Gibbs tackles him.In the garage, Abby has created a virtual reality recreation of the ambush. She outfits Joe Westcott with a VR helmet and gun to help him remember. Meanwhile, the computer has linked the blueprint scrap in Kersey's apartment to the historic register and is searching.Abby walks Westcott through the VR scene. Inside the HQ he describes a computer and satellite modem and wall covered with documents and maps. He saw Ijil written on one and a clean cut picture of Kersey.Westcott walks outside to the ambush, but the firing is overwhelming. He takes the VR helmet off and leaves.Upstairs, Tony meets with Brooke Fenton, who is unnerved she can't reach him. She says he's always on chat, even at her apartment on her laptop.He came over to say good-bye before a business trip in India today. But later, they find he didn't fly out today.Gibbs visits Duckie in the morgue for a profile. Randall's parents were killed when he was five and he was raised in foster care, but always ran away. Duckie thinks being part of a terrorist group makes him finally feel like he belongs. Gibbs says he pushed Westcott too hard and Duckie encourages him to reach out.Gibbs finds him in a bar with Evan. Evan just got back from Iraq and says he can understand what Joe is going through. Joe disagrees and they end up in a fist fight. Joe says it's not the same because Evan came back OK.Back at NCIS, McGee has spent the night going through Kersey's chats on Brooke's laptop. He finds a photo of Kersey and Brooke in front of his car and they finally have his license plate.Gibbs checks in with Dr. Dan, who says Westcott needs to redevelop a sense of purpose and rebuild trust.Gibbs visits Westcott, who's ready to leave town. Gibbs invites him to stay at his place.Evan apologizes to Gibbs for letting Joe drink, but says it was nice to have his old brother back for a minute."Try to love the one you've got," Gibbs says.Gibbs takes Westcott to the convenience store where he and Torres ran into Kersey.He remembers Kersey standing in the corner looking shifty and someone coming in the door. He passed a note to a girl with blue hair.Later, they have Westcott's sketch artist description of the girl. They get a call about Kersey's car and head there. They find a terrified teenager who says Kersey paid him $200 to take the car and keep driving.Back at NCIS, Gibbs thinks Kersey hasn't left town yet and is following his plan. The convenience store manager said the girl with blue hair was a regular so Gibbs sends Tony and Ziva to stake it out.Back at Gibbs' house, Westcott can't sleep. He's wracked with guilt for letting Hall get killed. Gibbs tells him he has to keep fighting and accept help.In the morning of the stakeout, Tony tries to get info out of Ziva about her opera date. There's no guy, she goes to the opera every year on her late sister Tali's birthday. But it's sold out this year and she feels like she's letting her down.They spot blue hair and ask her about Kersey. She says he brought homeless kids like her food and odd jobs. The last note told her to meet him at a coffee shop today at 10. He was going to give her a box to drop off at union station, but she says it was "nothing bad."The girl waits for Kersey in the coffee shop. He comes in with a small package and sits down. "You know where this is going, but I'd like to know when it's done," he says.Tony and Ziva pop out with guns on him.Back at interrogation, they open the package and find a bomb.Gibbs asks him questions, but Kersey stays silent. Tony and Westcott watch from observation.Gibbs shows him a photo of Private Christopher Gomez, who left behind two little brothers. He was KIA by Ijil rebels. Gibbs tries to appeal to his orphan side as he asks for info on the other bomb. Westcott gets angry that Kersey won't even look at photos of his men, including Private Hall, who left a pregnant wife.Gibbs gets in Kersey's face demanding info about the bomb. He cries and gives his Arabic name, then says he's glad he killed Hall. When he spits on Hall's photo, Westcott charges out of observation and into interrogation and attacks Kersey.As Gibbs pulls him off, Westcott remembers more about inside HQ, including that Brooke Fenton's photo was also on the wall.Back in the office, Brooke's laptop schedule shows she's working a catering event, but they don't know where. Abby comes in to report she got a name to match the blueprint, a home belonging to Senator Geoffrey Roberts.He's hosting Thanksgiving for a Senate committee tonight at his house.At the senator's house, they find the bomb in the kitchen, but Brooke has disappeared. They find her chef's whites and know with the roadblock, she might still be there.Gibbs sees her telltale ponytail. She's in a cop's uniform getting into a cruiser. As she looks for the keys, they surround her.With Gibbs, Joe Westcott goes back to talk to McCartney again. He tells McCartney his head is messed up and maybe McCartney should talk to somebody, too. When McCartney isn't sure he's up to it, Gibbs references the fact he charged after Hall and got his body back.McCartney tells him he didn't do it, it was Westcott.Westcott remembers the ambush again, this time firing at Kersey and driving him away, then going to get Hall and dragging him out of the line of fire.Westcott is relieved to know he didn't run away."You didn't run, forgive yourself for the rest," Gibbs says."I just wish it would have mattered," Westcott says."It mattered to us," McCartney tells him. He and Westcott share a hug.At the office, they're getting ready to head to Gibbs' for Thanksgiving. But first Tony has a surprise for Ziva. He tells her McGee installed surround sound in the office. He presses play on opera and leaves her alone with her sister's memory.
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A dad waits to pick up his daughter and her friend from work at a theater after a midnight movie. The other daughter's dad, Scott Martin, calls as the girls come out.Just then, a black van pulls up and masked men try to grab the girls. Wade comes to their rescue and bravely fights the abductors off as his daughter runs for help. But the attackers get the upper hand and grab Rosie, shooting Wade in the process.At work, it's the middle of the night but Ziva is in a great mood because her friend Shmeil called from Israel and she's going to get to see him on his layover. Tony pouts when she won't give him details.Gibbs announces the body of the week, a dead Navy officer and child abduction.At the scene, the victim is Navy Captain David Wade. Rosie Martin is missing.David's daughter Lydia is waiting nearby with Rosie's mom, Connie. Lydia's mom is in the Navy, and on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Arabian Sea.Scott Martin shows up, he's also in the Navy. He heard the abduction on the phone and they raced over. When Gibbs asks Lydia if she can ID the attackers, Scott gets in her face and pressures her. She yells that her dad tried to stop the men.Back at the office, they watch the theater surveillance. Gibbs addresses the whole NCIS office, which is on the case, along with the FBI.The men wore stocking masks and obscured the van's plate.In MTAC, Lydia talks to her mom, Jennifer Wade, at sea. She's been given a transfer but bad weather is keeping her stuck on the ship. Jennifer suggests Lydia stay with the Martins, but Gibbs advises against it. Ziva offers to host her.In the morgue, Duckie has ID'd black primer from the van. It washed off, meaning the paint job was temporary. Duckie advises Gibbs to take things slowly and not rush anything.Ziva takes Lydia down to Abby's lab. She turns over the shirt she was wearing during the attack. Abby's analyzing the bullet that killed Lydia's dad and offers to try facial reconstruction if Lydia can remember anything.McGee and Tony meet with Connie and Scott Martin, who have turned over Rosie's computer. McGee finds a chat log with "Diesel" who asked if she was working the midnight show and said he might see her there.Gibbs goes to check him out, he's pervily selling pumpkins. He hocks a loogie on Gibbs' shoes, so Gibbs cold cocks him.Back at NCIS, McGee and Gibbs talk to Diesel, a registered sex offender -- for peeing on a Dumpster next to a middle school. He was posing as a college freshman, but he's 30. He said hi to her at the movies, but then says he went straight to work breaking down his boss' pumpkin stands. He says he doesn't know anything else.Ziva talks to Lydia, who knows him as "Diesel the Weasel." Lydia feels bad she can't be of more help. Ziva tells her dealing with loss is very personal.Abby brings Lydia her phone back. She sees that her friends are planning a rally at the bowling alley where her dad and Scott were in a league. She wants to go.At the alley, Lydia is greeted by her friends and Ginny, who runs the place. Another employee, Fred, also says hi. Connie and Scott Martin show up and Scott immediately starts haranguing Gibbs for not being out searching for Rosie. Then he yells at Lydia about a description of the attackers, saying she saw them and must be able to give one. NCIS whisks her out of there.Back in Abby's lab, she shows Lydia face samples for face types. Lydia gets a text that says "Help lyds, they hav--"She thinks it's from Rosie. They trace it to a burn phone in a trailer. There's a man's warm dead body in the trailer and signs Rosie was there, including the phone she sent the help text from. They're thinking the man was shot by his accomplices for letting her send the text.McGee ID's the dead man as Sean Oakby, a petty criminal with no sex crime record. He's sent messages to multiple burn phones in the past few days, including photos of Rosie in a party dress.Gibbs tells McGee to have Agent Fornell find Miranda Pennebaker.Lydia confirms Oakby was one of the men who tried to grab her. Gibbs comes down to the lab and tells Abby and Ziva the attackers are trying to sell Rosie. He asks Ziva and Abby to stay with Lydia and make her feel safe.Fornell calls Gibbs and he asks about Pennebaker.Cut to Gibbs finding Pennebaker (Alex Kingston), who owes Gibbs and can sell anything. She is offended at the idea she'd be involved in human trafficking. Gibbs knows, but thought it was worth a shot. She knows someone who might know someone.Ziva, Abby and Lydia make themselves at home at Gibbs' house.Miranda takes Gibbs to see Edgar Hayes, who works at the State Department and has some sordid interests. Gibbs asks him who might in the market for a kidnapped girl. He agrees to make some calls.Duckie calls Gibbs to report Oakby had rosin used by athletes on his hands. Gibbs thinks of the bowling alley.Ziva and Abby enjoy a frittata and a few beers. Lydia comes down from her shower. She remembered the other guy from the van was kind of pudgy with a beard.The power goes out. They think it's an outage, but Ziva sees other house's lights are on. She leads them upstairs and draws her gun.A man jumps on her in the kitchen and pulls a gun, asking where Lydia is. Abby sneaks up behind him and cracks him on the head with a frying pan. Lydia looks at him: it's Fred from the bowling alley.In interrogation, Ziva and Gibbs talk to Fred, who says he drove the van but doesn't know where Rosie is. His ex-con buddy Merle and his cousin Sean came to him asking for girls, two for $500,000 to sell to a man who likes virgins.Abby keeps Lydia company in the lab. Gibbs brings Abby Caf-pow and she reports she found motion sickness medicine in Sean Oakby's lab results, meaning a flight or deep sea trip.Miranda Pennebaker waits for Gibbs, to report Edgar found their buyer is Claude Damien LeMonde, drug smuggler and perv who lives at sea. They know his helicopter will be landing at a field in Reston, VA in the morning.Merle brings Rosie to the helicopter to sell her, but finds NCIS waiting for him instead. Rosie is reunited with her parents.Lydia is reunited with her mom Jennifer at NCIS.Miranda Pennebaker visits Gibbs in his basement for a bourbon. She tells him she's thinking of retiring.Tony comes back to the office to find Ziva all dressed up to go out with her friend Shmeil. When he comes out of the restroom, Tony is surprised to see he's an elderly man, whom Ziva introduces as a poet and philosopher.Shmeil remembers meeting Tony's dad at a bar in Geneva. He invites Tony to join them.
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A man at close range shoots three rounds at Fornell, who, wearing body armor, returns fire with six rounds and kills the assailant, who was a Navy seaman; Gibbs and company and Fornell all investigate; Diane, the mutual ex-wife of Gibbs and Fornell, also shows up, and several interesting exchanges ensue. Vance announces that, according to him and two of his counterpart directors, Gibbs, Fornell, and Diane will work together on this case. McGee provides refuge and security to Diane, who has become overwrought, then Gibbs and Fornell find that they have relaxed. While executing a search warrant, Gibbs, Fornell, Tony, and McGoo find frozen fish and a dead body. Gibbs, Fornell, Tony, McGee, and Ziva find a missing accountant, who passes out and then dies. Gibbs makes a toast and a proposal at a wedding reception; Fornell, McGee, and Ziva find two of the bad guys. Gibbs and Diane have a chat.
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A Navy Lieutenant Commander returns from an overseas tour to her home in base housing at NAS Pax River, Maryland, and finds the decomposing body of her husband with a broken neck; Gibbs and his team investigate. Ducky says that the victim did not die at home, and Palmer says that he had cirrhosis. The victim's wallet contains a $100 bill with new security features not yet circulated to the public, so the Secret Service enters the picture, as does a hot-chick agent, against whom Gibbs wins the first round. McGee and Abby find a print of an inside man at the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP). Tony's father visits him for Christmas, but Tony shows much displeasure. Tony and McGee find a cache of $100 bills inside the home; at Rock Creek Park hikers find the decomposing body of the inside man; Abby figures out how the bills left the BEP. The team put the pieces together, Gibbs suggests a gift to the Secret Service agent, then the team-along with Tony's father-gather to watch a ...
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Open with a man fishing with his son. They end up hooking what appears to be a human ear. Based on the uniform the dead body appears to be that of Petty Officer Second Class Grizsmer. It has gashes on the head and hadn't been in the water long. But quickly they realize his uniform rank is wrong and his fingerprint doesn't show up in the active service member database. Ziva finds a picture from when she wore a pregnancy prosthetic for an old case. Tony notices she was smiling. McGee stops by with word the victim was Tyler Wilkes a lowly-regarded journalist who is something of a government paparazzi. He's been working on story about drugs in the Navy and would have had many enemies. Ducky tells Gibbs that Wilkes died via exsanguination and had several blows to his chest and abdomen. But the death was essentially an accident, as he had a case of mono of which he was likely unaware. One of the blows spit his liver. That said, the killer disposed of the body in a way that makes it clear he knew he had committed a homocide. Tony meets with Grizsmer. Grizsmer knowingly lent Wilkes his uniform in exchange for being kept out of the story. Wilkes wanted to get into Grizsmer's barracks to conduct research. Grizsmer roommates are brought in and they are upset Wilkes was going through their stuff. They all confess to his murder. After a workout Ziva is stunned to find her father Eli (Michael Nouri) hiding in her car. She thinks it was stupidly risk for him to travel in the U.S. Eli says he arrived that morning and says his business there is to see her. He assures her that his intentions are honorable. Abby tells Gibbs that some high-end electronic equipment is missing from Wilkes' apartment. They still haven't found Wilkes' car. Ziva tells Gibbs about Eli being in the country and even his own people at Mossad know he's there. She asks if he has any instructions. He wants her to keep him updated. Vance's wife Jackie drops by his office with the exciting word that the kids will be gone that night and they'll have the place to themselves. Ziva and Eli had lunch. She asks him about retirement. She wants him to repent for some of his past actions as a father and he seems interested in redemption. Gibbs and Vance talk about Eli's presence in the country. Eli is supposedly on his way out at Mossad and they are worried he might be stirring up trouble during a precarious time for the Middle East. Vance had made a call to Homeland Security and learned that Eli's Iranian contemporary, Arash Kazmi, is also in Washington. They are concerned Eli is there to kill Kazmi. Gibbs and Vance meet Eli and Ziva and mention Kazmi. Eli bring them to his hotel room, where Kazmi is waiting. It turns out Eli and Kazmi are childhood friends and are meeting in secret. The two recognize the need for open dialogue and are risking their lives to come together. They brought Vance in to help Eli remain in power. Eli thinks the potential for peace depends on it. Eli seems to be winning over Ziva. Wilkes' car has been found. Inside the find a camera, along with a tablet on which his photos were backed up. They find pictures of his likely killer, but all that is visible is a hat. Vance tells Jackie they need to have Eli over for dinner. She is not pleased. Tony tells Gibbs that Griszmer's bunkmates could not have killed Wilkes. They confessed just to make the story go away, as the story Wilkes was working on involved one of their friends. Ziva walks in and sees the picture of Wilkes mystery killer. Her face changes but she says nothing. Ziva confronts Eli about lying about when he got to America. She shows him a picture of Wilkes' body. It turns out that Wilkes recognized him and began taking his picture. Eli tried to take the camera and a fight ensued. Eli covered up the murder. Ziva is distraught and doesn't think she can get past her father's sins. He asks her to join him for dinner at Vance's home, "one last time." During dinner an angry Ziva leaves the table and walks outside to call Gibbs. During the call somebody opens fire on Vance's home, firing through the window into the dining room. Ziva chases the gunman, eventually wounding him and forcing him to crash his car and flee. Tony and McGee arrive at the scene, while Gibbs helps Ziva track the gunman. Inside they see Vance is unharmed, but he is covered in someone else's blood. Gibbs and Ziva track the gunman to a garage, but he kills himself before then can get more information. Back at the house McGee tells them Jackie was hit and is on her way to the ambulance. Eli was killed and Ziva rushes to his body. At the hospital the team waits hours for word on Jackie. There is concern that what happened to Eli will be a declaration of war. Eventually Vance walks out and comes over to Gibbs. "She's dead. My wife is dead, Gibbs." TO BE CONTINUED...
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Ziva remembers learning how to say the blessing with her father when she was a child. Cut to present day, her praying in a synagogue, asking God why she should still have faith. Tony finds her. She's not in the mood for sympathy. She wants revenge. At NCIS, Sec Nav Jarvis gets 48 hours from the Secretary of State before they tell Israel what happened. They caught the shooter, but not the ones who hired him. Jarvis is mad no one told him Eli David was in the country. Deputy Director Craig is on his way back to fill in for Vance. In the morgue, Duckie puts Jackie Vance away. She died of a single gunshot. The shooter committed suicide by cyanide, but they haven't ID'd him. He also had less than six months to live, due to liver cancer. Vance comes into the office to find Deputy Director Jerome Craig (Greg Germann) in his chair. He was buying chocolates for Jackie in Geneva when he got the news. He excuses himself. Vance asks to be part of the investigation.Jarvis will keep him in the loop, but says he can't be involved. Outside, Craig assures Gibbs he's not interested in Vance's job permanently. Gibbs assures him he has his back. McGee IDs the shooter as Roland Ames, a Swedish mercenary. Gibbs wants them to track down Eli's Iranian pal Kazmi -- Gibbs dropped a bug in his pocket. They track him to Georgetown. Down in the lab, Abby makes cookies. Ziva drops by. She knows she has to pretend her father is still alive. Ziva wants to know about the bullets, but Abby says she can't tell her. Gibbs sidles up to Kazmi on the street. Gibbs pulls him into an alley and pulls a gun on him, demanding to know where Eli is. Once Gibbs is sure Kazmi doesn't know, Gibbs takes him in to NCIS to break the news. Kazmi says he approached Eli about forging peace. To prove he's on Gibbs' side, he offers to share Iranian intelligence. In MTAC, Tim chats with Gavriela Adel, their mole in Jerusalem, who has heard from her contacts that Eli David was going to visit Ziva. She says the First Wave group, a pro-Palestinian organization funded by an American billionaire named Gustafson, was out to get Eli David. Back in the office, McGee finds a wire transfer of $3 million to the shooter's ex wife just after the shooting. Tony interviews Gustafson about First Wave. He admits contributing because of his oil ties in the Middle East. Gustafson is about to call his lawyer when Vance busts in, full of rage, and asks Gustafson what he thinks about collateral damage to innocent people. Craig diplomatically gets Vance out of the room, then asks him, on Jarvis' behalf, to take administrative leave. Duckie finds Ziva in the dark morgue standing outside the drawer that holds her father. She wants to take his body to Israel for burial according to Jewish custom. Duckie agrees to help, despite the secret murder investigation. Tony and Gibbs come down, telling her to go stay at Tony's because her place isn't safe. At Tony's she sees that he has brought in her old friend Shmiel for her to talk to. Back at NCIS, Mossad Deputy Director Ilan Bodnar (Oded Fehr) comes looking for Ziva and Eli. He demands they call Jarvis. They call Gibbs instead. At Tony's place in the middle of the night, he hears Ziva making troubled noises in her sleep. Back at NCIS, Jerome Craig briefs Bodnar on Jackie and Eli's deaths. He assumes the Palestinians or Iranians are behind it -- Craig tells him the Israelis have agreed to let NCIS lead the investigation and the Israelis prosecute. Bodnar doesn't agree to cooperate. Gibbs meets Vance. He can't even tell his kids who killed her. Vance tells Gibbs he now understands some of what Gibbs has done, getting revenge for his wife's murder. He asks if it was worth it, but Gibbs doesn't answer. Vance asks Gibbs to catch whoever did it to keep war from breaking out. At Tony's place, Ziva checks her email and learns Bodnar is in town. She's upset he's in the loop and she's not. Tony tells her to focus on grieving. At NCIS, Abby finds the bullets were Russian, from a batch seized by Swedish police last year. They were smuggled by an Iranian named Omeed Abasi. He's not in the Iranian intelligence files Kazmi gave them.Gibbs talks to Kazmi, who knows Omeed's name and is surprised he wasn't in the intel files. Craig and Gibbs believe him and don't think Kazmi's involved. Bodnar drops by, angry over having learned that they believe Kazmi really wanted peace. He thinks Kazmi and Iran are responsible and says it could lead to war. At Tony's place, Ziva sees an incoming video call on Tony's computer and answers. It's Bodnar, he wants to see her. When she says no, he says he'll just track her down. Kazmi checks with his office and finds Omeed was in the files they sent -- but there was a six hour lag from when they sent the files and when they arrived. They were hacked. McGee tracks the wire transfer to the shooter's ex-wife to a bank account in the Caymans labeled Virtue.They call Ziva, who says Virtue is "Tohar" in Hebrew -- Ilan Bodner's middle name. He's on his way to see her.They roll out. Tony tells her where to find the gun taped to the back of his toilet. Gibbs and Tony arrive there first. McGee reports Bodnar isn't at his hotel room. Jarvis, Craig and Gibbs brief Kazmi on the fact Bodnar is behind Eli's death, trying to frame Iran and take over as director of Mossad.Gibbs commends him for trying to forge peace. Kazmi gets a ride to the airport in an SUV. When his car stops on the street, it explodes in a giant fireball. Ziva and Shmiel prepare to fly with Eli David's body to Israel. Tony comes to see her off. She gets choked up and gives him a hug. He whispers something in her ear in Hebrew."I know," she says. (We would need a Hebrew expert to verify this for sure, but the title of the song that plays for the rest of the episode is "You are not alone" which can be assumed is what Tony whispered in Ziva's ear) The team goes to Jackie's graveside service. Leon consoles his children. In Jerusalem, Ziva leaves a prayer in the wailing wall.
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Civilian Lila Cutwright and Marine Lance Corporal Chad Dunn are the victims of the car crash. At the scene, Duckie immediately notices Lila has a wound on her head that doesn't match the accident. There are no skid marks at the scene. Gibbs declares it a possible murder-suicide and orders the car taken to Abby. In the garage, Abby looks at the spiderweb impact on the windshield. Flashback to Abby as a young girl playing in the junkyard with Luca, wondering how a truck windshield got the same crack. She finds a teddy bear in the truck and resolves to get it back to the young owner, whoever she is. Back in the garage, she doesn't want to tell McGee about it. Upstairs, McGee worries about Abby. Gibbs comes in for a report. Lila Cutwright was 19, attending community college. Her father dropped her off at class yesterday. Chad Dunn was 20, last seen leaving the barracks on weekend leave. Cutwright's father owns a drycleaner at Quantico and Dunn's father was stationed there 10 years ago. They knew each other as kids, but don't seem to have been in touch since fourth grade. A decade ago the dads got in a fight and both men were charged with disorderly conduct. Gibbs visits Duckie in the morgue. Dunn was ejected from the vehicle and died of blunt force trauma. He confirmed Lila was dead before the crash. Abby is testing fragments of whatever hit her head and stuff that was under her nails. Duckie warns Gibbs that Abby is acting stranger than usual. Gibbs visits Abby in the garage, where she has laid out all the evidence on the ground. She didn't find any DNA under Lila's nails and the murder weapon was made of chestnut. She's spacey and distracted, but explains Cutwright was attacked when she was seated in the car facing out. FlashbackYoung Abby cuts opens a 2 liter bottle and pours water in to magnify the name on the teddy bear's tag: Ricki Evans. Ziva shows in Walter and Meredith Dunn. They run into Lila's dad Scott Cutwright, who accuses the Dunn's son of killing his daughter. Walter Dunn decks him. Ziva sets the families up in separate interview rooms, neither will talk about their feud. McGee finds a phone record that Lila Cutwright called 911 and hung up last week. Dunn called a disposable phone the night before the crash was discovered and multiple times in the days before. Gibbs talks to the Dunns and Ziva sits down with Scott. Walter says a decade ago Scott's wife died and he started spreading lies about his family. Scott tells Ziva he had an affair with Meredith and told Walter about it so she could leave him. Walter beat him badly. The kids knew about it.Walter claims it's ancient history. Scott and Meredith exchanged letters last year and Scott says she was ready to leave Walter this time. In the lab, Abby tells Gibbs that at the time of the crash, Chad was unconscious. First the killer whacked Lila then shoved Chad's head against the car and put him behind the wheel, using the murder weapon to hold down the gas pedal. But she was wrong, it wasn't chestnut, it was aluminum. She gets defensive and yells at Gibbs that she's not perfect. FlashbackAbby brings Ricki her teddy bear back. Ricki's mom died in the car crash and her funeral is today. Ricki explains that she can't have the bear because her grandfather gave it to her and she's only allowed to see him with her mom. Ricki's dad sees Abby with the bear and is mad at his daughter. McGee and Gibbs trace the disposable phone Dunn called to his cousin, Brandon Singer, who owns an alternative energy company. They find him tinkering with solar panels in the back yard of his house. Brian says he was supposed to go hiking with Chad, but he canceled. Chad and Lila were dating secretly. They reconnected after Chad found the love letters Scott wrote to Meredith and Chad tracked the Cutwrights down. Brian says Chad was afraid what his dad might do if he found out about them. Back at NCIS, Walter Dunn told Gibbs he was home at the time of the accident. Gibbs says Abby called in sick, so they'll have to pick up the slack for her. He wants McGee to run DNA. Gibbs meets with Meredith for coffee. She says she doesn't love her husband anymore, but he was home with her at the time of the crash. In the garage, Tony and Ziva try to catalogue the evidence according to Abby's complicated system. They find a bank receipt for a $15,000 cash withdrawal. Gibbs visits McGee in the lab, he's been trying to run Walter Dunn's DNA but Major Mass Spec won't cooperate. He checks the "Abby's Lab for Dummies" book (he's featured on the cover). Gibbs tells McGee to find Abby and make sure she's OK. Meanwhile, Abby calls out Bingo numbers for old people. McGee finds her there after tracing her phone. He tells her everyone is worried about her. She shows him a small pink felt heart. Flashback to young Abby with the teddy bear, with the heart stitched into it. She takes it to Jake's barbershop. Jake is Ricki's grandfather. Abby suggests he take the bear to her, but he says it's bigger than what she can understand. Grown up Abby gets overwhelmed by the idea that bad things outweigh the good things, in which case why should she even try? Back at NCIS, they find the $15,000 came from Lila Cutwright's trust account. They found job searches on the Cutwright's computer in the city where Camp Pendleton is, where Dunn was being transferred. They think Lila was moving with Chad. Chad also tried to get a loan for $5,000, but was turned down. Tony and Gibbs talk to the loan officer, who really wanted to give Chad the money but couldn't justify it. Chad said he wanted to use it for an investment in something solar, but the paperwork made her nervous. Ziva and Gibbs take a search warrant to Brian, and accuse him of taking their $15,000 in a Ponzi scheme. He denies killing them, but Tony finds an aluminum bat in his Dumpster. In the office, Abby tries to write a note to McGee. FlashbackAbby watches Ricki's dad pack their things into a moving van. She watches as Ricki comes out and sees the stuffed bunny Abby left for her. Abby hangs onto Ricki's teddy bear. Gibbs finds Abby with the pink felt heart from the bear. She tells Gibbs about having a bear as a kid that she loved to pieces. She tells Gibbs she's trying to find a way to be OK with not being able to do enough good. He tells her she can't always see the payoff of the good she does. He reminds her of the first day they met, when she gave him the fortune from her cookie because she wanted it to be about him. He pulls it out of his wallet."The things you do mean something to people," he tells her. Flashback to Abby in her childhood home, surrounded by hippos and early goth gear. She cries to Luca that she couldn't fix things so Ricki could see her grandfather again. He assures her Ricki won't forget that Abby gave her her rabbit. Back in the present, Abby reads the fortune: "Today's new friend is tomorrow's family."
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A guy on a bike wants to get in the front door of a building, but is stopped by McGee, who tells him to use the back. He goes in the back and gets whacked by a homeless man throwing trash out of a Dumpster -- it's Gibbs. The man, who is Middle Eastern, keeps walking and passes Ziva all dolled up gabbing on her cell phone. The man gets suspicious and takes her hostage. Gibbs draws. The man tries to lead Ziva out, but when he passes the Dumpster, Tony pops up and grabs him, Ziva decks him and NCIS gets their man and his laptop. He's been on the Most Wanted list. Back at NCIS, Tony enjoys the capture. They took down Ajay Khan, the guy who hacked into MTAC last month, the No. 2 cyber terrorist, who they hope can lead them to No. 1. But in the meantime, the network is down. Tony complains to Kevin from IT about the delay. He explains there are new security measures in place. Kevin gives Ziva a flier about an improv comedy night to give to McGee. Because of his beard, he says, he usually ends up playing a bumbling terrorist. In interrogation, Ajay calls his lawyer, who can't make it until tomorrow. Gibbs doesn't care and forces Ajay to look at photos of Agent James Hunt, who was undercover when Ajay's hack took down the system and exposed him. All Ajay knows about his employer is that he goes by M.C., but he doesn't know where he is. Ajay is glib and dismissive of Gibbs' threats, calling him a technological dinosaur. Out in the hall, Gibbs tells Tony he said "UP address" instead of "IP" so Ajay would think they're dumb. In the lab, McGee takes Ajay's laptop apart as Abby supervises closely. McGee is impressed by Khan's credentials -- he also went to MIT and remembers a hack Ajay pulled there. With the laptop's power bypassed, McGee turns it on. The motherboard starts smoking, failure. Down in the morgue, Duckie explains that Ajay is motivated only by money. He doesn't have any family or friends, he's the ultimate narcissist. Duckie thinks he would worry about losing it all or dying. Khan double crossed a terrorist group that's now being held in Guantanamo. In MTAC, Gibbs conferences with Air Force Brigadier General Jack Mandrake to arrange a three hour intimidation trip for Khan to Gitmo. NCIS Deputy Director Jerome Craig joins Gibbs and balks at the idea of doing something off-book. Gibbs visits Abby in the lab. She captured some of Khan's computer booting up on film before it fried. With screen capture of the video, she has an address of a warehouse in Anacostia. Tony and Ziva check out the warehouse, which is big, dark and empty. Except for the dead body on the ground, covered in sores. Tony suggests the Hazmat team. Back in interrogation, Gibbs Khan photos of the dead man, killed by ebola. He was the warehouse caretaker who doubled as a bomb maker. Gibbs mocks the use of ebola as unoriginal. He mocks Khan, saying he bets he's not even the brains of the operation. Khan boasts that they should just wait a few days to find out. Gibbs has what he needed.Meanwhile, McGee waits in the hall with an orange jumpsuit. Andrews Air Force BaseKhan is shackled and strapped into a transport plane to Guantanamo. Ziva and Tony join him. Khan tells Gibbs he doesn't believe they're going to Guantanamo. Gibbs gets off the plane as they close the doors and power up. Gibbs visits Duckie in the locked-down morgue, where the ebola victim is on a slab.Duckie found a cut on his finger, which could be how he was given it. Duckie thinks he was given a weakened strain of the virus. Craig comes to get Gibbs to go over the plan. He's not sure what to do if Khan doesn't start talking before the plane lands. Gibbs says it'll be up to Craig. On the flight, Tony has to hold a barf bag for Khan. Ziva tells Khan that his former employers are at Guantanamo. Khan doesn't think they have the power to arrange to put him in holding with them. Craig visits Abby in the lab. She found the ebola strain was developed as a vaccine by the CDC, but their system was hacked and the vaccine was shipped as a flu vaccine. Craig realizes this means that anyone who opens the boxes for the flu vaccines could unknowingly release ebola, putting hundreds or thousands of lives in danger. Tony takes a call on the plane that it's time to change the game. Khan still isn't taking them seriously as the crew tells Tony and Ziva to strap in for the descent into Gitmo. Tony takes out a syringe and injects Khan with something, knocking him out. Back at NCIS, Kevin the IT guy nervously looks around for Gibbs with a replacement phone. Abby announces she has tracked the ebola shipment to the GPS-equipped delivery trucks. Craig calls for Kevin. Khan wakes up shackled in a cell with Tony and Ziva looking over him. He hears shouting in Arabic, Ziva translates: "Give him to me, you pig, you coward. Die!" They leave Khan alone in his cell, surrounded by screaming terrorists. Metro PD helps NCIS set up a DUI checkpoint to intercept the delivery van. Gibbs and McGee see it approaching. Ziva and Tony bring Khan a tray of food, which he throws across his room. He still refuses to talk. An army guard tells Tony and Ziva the base commander wants to see one of them, but because Khan isn't legally supposed to be there, one of them has to stay with him. Khan enjoys seeing them busted. The guard leaves Tony a walkie talkie. Back in DC, Gibbs and McGee pull the confused delivery driver out of the van. In his cell, Khan waxes about grunge music. Tony tries to understand his motivation. Khan says it's about a steady paycheck and power. Tony compares Khan to Tony Curtis' character in "Spartacus," who just "minced around giving people sponge baths" and had no real power. The cell door opens and Tony notices the guards are gone and the cameras are off. Khan thinks it's all part of the ruse until the lights go out, an alert comes over the loudspeakers and they hear gunfire in the distance. Tony was required to check his gun at the gate per base protocol and he can't reach anyone on the radio. They hear shouting in the distance. Ziva radios back, telling Tony the entire security system is down. It may have been hacked. Khan thinks his boss found out he was there and thinks he's going to flip. Ziva radios Tony that other cell doors have opened.Tony goes to investigate, telling Khan to shut his cell door. A guard walks into the cell block and starts to explains when another prisoner's door opens and he attacks the guard. Tony tries to help but is shot in the leg. Khan hides in his cell. In DC, with the truck enclosed in a Hazmat tent, McGee and Gibbs don Hazmat suits and find the box with the ebola virus. It's rigged to blow. Back in Gitmo, the prisoner throws Tony to the ground, gets the guard's gun and shoots him. Tony holds his wounded leg. The prisoner is about to shoot him when Ziva comes and shoots the prisoner in the back. Tony and Ziva go for cover in Khan's cell as they hear more cell doors open. The only have eight bullets to fend off an angry mob. Back in DC, everyone runs for cover from the ebola bomb. It explodes in the tent, but is contained. Gibbs gets a call from Craig. Back in Khan's cell, Tony uses his belt as a tourniquet for his leg. Ziva translates a terrorist banging on the other side of the door, saying he'll let Tony and Ziva go if they give him Khan. Tony thinks about it, then agrees as Ziva points out Khan has been of no use to them yet. They're about to open the door and throw Khan out when he agrees to talk. Ziva holds the cell door shut as it's banged on from the outside as Khan tells McGee back in DC how he contacts "MC." McGee doesn't believe Khan's first answer and cites an old hacking trick Khan used at MIT to make Khan tell the truth. He gives them MC's IP address so McGee can track him.They radio Gibbs the all clear. The lights come on in the cell, Tony takes the tourniquet off his "hurt" leg and the cell door opens to reveal Gibbs in the hallway and an unhurt "guard" and "prisoner." Kevin the improv terrorist comes out and practices screaming in Arabic. The team leaves the holding facility at Andrews in the blowing snow -- they were never in Cuba.
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A Marine leads the pack on a training course, but at the top of the wall, he starts bleeding from his nose, falls and dies. At the office, the team complains about NCIS Deputy Director Jerome Craig (Greg Germann), who's been filling in for Vance for two months now.Gibbs interrupts with the body of the week: a dead Marine at Quantico.But first, Jerome Craig pesters Gibbs to see if he has heard anything about when Vance might return. At home alone, Vance remembers Eli David's toast with his family, the night he and his wife were killed. Going through his wife's files, he finds a bank statement with a huge balance and keys to a safe deposit box. On the obstacle course, the victim is Lance Cpl Gabe Crow, 23. He has defensive wounds on his hands, bruises on his head and weird cuts on his leg. At the bank, Vance can't close out the account because it's in Jackie's name only. He checks out the safe deposit box, which contains their marriage certificate, some of her jewelry and files from Mathison & Burke law offices and a big wad of $100 bills. The victim rundown back at NCIS: Crow was raised by a single mom, was training for weapons tech, about to deploy on his first tour and had a spotless record. He spent time in juvie as a teenager but graduated at the top of his college class.McGee finds chat room records.Crow's mother got a call from him three days ago and said he sounded "agitated." He was sending her cash to help with her mortgage. Private David Holland from Quantico comes to talk to Gibbs. Crow was involved in illegal backroom fighting in clubs in DC. Holland saw him sneak off base last night and come back beat up after midnight. Vance goes to talk to Jackie's lawyer, Abe Mathison, who drew up the documents to separate their property. The lawyer can't tell Leon anything other than she hired him last May. Vance leaves and calls someone to pick his kids up at school. In the morgue, Duckie reports Crow had 13 wounds over the past few days or week. He died of cerebral hemorrhage from taking repeated hits to the head. The weird marks on his legs are older puncture wounds. He also had a stitched up wound in his side with plastic in it. His nails were split, meaning his killer will have wounds. Gibbs worries about Vance. Back in the office, they watch street fighting videos and find deposits to Crow's account after the fights. There's a sign for Williams Fruit Company in the video. Jerome Craig comes to Gibbs with messages that the base commander has called three times about the investigation into Crow's death.Vance shows up, announcing he's ready to work -- on the floor with Gibbs' NCIS team. Gibbs gently questions his motives and the team makes room for him. At the fruit company, Gibbs and Tony talk to Ruben Williams, the owner, who knows nothing about the fight club. He recognizes one of his employees from the video as "Chucky Bang," a giant Samoan. Back in interrogation, Chucky recognizes Crow's photo but says he hasn't seen him for three months. He says he was in the ER last night with digestive issues, but they notice his hands are covered in cuts. He says Crow quit fighting, but was good at it. Tony confirms Chucky's alibi. Vance pipes up, saying Holland was written up twice for fighting with Crow, including three days before he died. Holland called for the ambulance, but not until 30 minutes after Crow died. Vance and Gibbs pick Holland up from Quantico. Back at NCIS in interrogation, Holland says the write ups on his behavior are wrong and they called the paramedics late because they were trying to save him. He doesn't have any scratches or wounds on his arms. Down in the lab, Abby explains Crow's side and leg wounds came from a jagged fiberglass tool. The stitches were bad enough she think he did it himself -- and more than once from the same injury happening over and over again. In the office, McGee looks into weapons Holland might have checked out and if he had any mental issues. Gibbs is surprised to learn that Vance sent Ziva and Tony on assignment.Gibbs tries to tell Vance they can handle things and he should go home, but Vance won't listen. Craig suggests to Gibbs that Vance might not be fit to be at work, but Gibbs argues they need to give him time. Ziva and Tony watch over the Vance kids. Gibbs finds Vance staring off into space in the break room. Vance shows him the legal files he found. He's rattled to think he might not have known everything about his wife. He wants answers. Gibbs assures Vance that Jackie loved him and urges him to go home to his kids. Then he tells Vance not to come back until he's ready to be there. McGee reports no mental issues in Holland's records, but he did find a lot of communications with Crow. Holland got access to the weapons room the night before Crow's death. Vance comes home to find Tony chasing his kids around the house with a pizza box on his head. He's happy to see them happy. Ziva tells Vance she's sorry about his wife's death, given that it wouldn't have happened if her father hadn't been there. Vance tells her not to worry about it. Gibbs and McGee go to Holland's room at Quantico and find him dead on the bathroom floor. In the morgue, Duckie reports Holland was also beaten over the same time period as Crow, but not as severely. His spleen ruptured. He had the same fiberglass bits in a wound. McGee finds three other Quantico Marines with similar injuries in the last three weeks. They look into their CO, Jonah Ellis, in his first command since returning from Afghanistan. Jonah's brother was captured, tortured and killed in Afghanistan. He had the same wounds that the Quantico Marines do. Duckie calls it emotional transference. At Quantico, Gibbs and Vance try to talk to Ellis alone but his unit backs him up. He says he's trying to toughen them up. Back at NCIS, Vance drops in on Craig in his office. He asks Craig if he has a suitcase packed and says he'll be in touch. Vance finds Gibbs in his basement, refurbishing a cast iron stove. Gibbs gives Vance papers -- Shannon increased his life insurance at one point, worried he wouldn't return from overseas. Gibbs points out that Jackie did everything right after the attack on NCIS, she was preparing for life after him.Gibbs urges him to be OK for his kids. He says Jackie couldn't tell him what she was doing because she knew Vance would have left the job he loved.Vance asks what he's building, but Gibbs isn't saying.
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Plumbers show up at a suburban house when they see a badly wounded man stumbling down the street, holding his stomach. He rummages through their truck and chugs the drain cleaner then froths at the mouth and keels over. Back at NCIS, Palmer counts out $200 cash for McGee. They try to hide their transaction from Ziva and Tony. McGee gets busted for having a ticket connection and Tony feels left out. Gibbs announces the dead body of the week: a dead officer in Richmond, two hours away. At the scene, the victim is Lt. Gordon Roth. He was chased by police for running a stop sign before appearing on the street. He's been shot in the stomach and has bloody and broken knuckles, but died from the drain cleaner.Palmer and Duckie load the body in the van. Duckie plans to take the back roads to avoid the forecast snow. An unseen person in a black SUV watches them leave and gets orders from a woman on the phone not to lose them. The SUV follows the coroner's van. Back at NCIS, they learn Roth was sent to work in the Office of Naval Research after suffering hearing loss in Iraq and was an expert on high end military encryption, despite not having a degree. Duckie drives while Palmer does a crossword on his laptop. Their van won't go above 50 mph. One of their tires blows out, which Palmer finds weird since he just changed it. McGee explains to Tony that his cousin works for a concert promoter and occasionally gets him tickets. He didn't tell Tony because he knew he'd take advantage of it. They meet with Commander Lisa Cleveland, Roth's CO, who says he was very stable. Roth oversaw the Navy's highly classified materials, the kind people might kill for. On the side of a country road, Palmer finishes changing the tire, which Duckie examines with a magnifying glass to find the blowout. He finds a bullet. A woman pulls up in a Mercedes and opens the back of the van while her goon holds a gun on Duckie and Palmer. She searches Roth's body, then announces "it" isn't there. They switch to plan B, which involves kidnapping Palmer and Duckie. Gibbs goes down to the morgue for an update and is surprised to find Duckie isn't there. Meanwhile, the ME's van pulls up to a cabin in the woods. There's a blood stain on the floor. They clap Duckie and Palmer in leg irons. The woman wants Duckie to conduct his autopsy in the cabin. She sends her men Lincoln and Marcus back to the scene to look for "it." Gibbs visits Abby, who has the results from Roth's car and his GPS-enabled camera, which puts him in a park taking pictures before he died. She calls Duckie then Palmer and both their phones are off. She tries to trace Palmer's phone, but the error code tells her his battery has been removed. Back upstairs, they know Palmer called the motor pool to report the flat. McGee traces the location of the call and pulls up surveillance footage, which shows the SUV trailing the van. Duckie and Palmer cut open Roth in the cabin. Roth had a hearing aid, which Duckie can find no physiological need for. Duckie suggests the shooter was about 6 feet tall and skin cells under his nails show the shooter was white. Duckie opens Roth's stomach, sending their captors outside for fresh air. Duckie tries to come up with a plan to get free. Back at NCIS, they have found the shot out tire on the side of the road and footprints and tire tracks.Tony reports Roth had an off shore bank account, funded by Cuban sources, a violation of Navy code. Old documents show that Roth's signature changed at some point. Lt. Roth is not Lt. Roth. In the cabin, Palmer uses not-Roth's stomach acid to eat through his leg irons while Duckie rewires his hearing aid to use as a microphone to listen to their captors outside. Roth was supposed to bring them a package and they plan to kill Duckie and Palmer when they're done with the autopsy. Abby runs facial recognition and confirms from Roth's high school photo that the victim isn't Roth. The imposter switched in 10 years ago on his Naval induction day, after he'd passed security clearances. Roth's been using his CO's access codes to download classified files once a month. They think he's a mole. Abby has ID'd Lt. Michael Dunkel's blood at the crime scene. Back at the cabin at night, Duckie reviews the plan with Palmer. With their captors back in the room, they explain that Roth was shot from his own gun during the course of a struggle. They suggest his attacker's prints might be on his gun. The woman gives her goons the OK to kill Duckie and Palmer. Duckie suggests they held back information to ensure their safety. The woman catches Palmer eyeing a teapot on the stove and Duckie is chagrined. She finds a gym locker key that they tell her Roth swallowed. Duckie tries to keep Palmer from talking, but he nervously babbles about finding the key and methane gas and a reaction with drain cleaner. Duckie admits they're stalling -- waiting for the cigarette to ignite the gauze in the oven. Duckie and Palmer back away and the oven explodes, catching Marcus on fire. The cabin fills with smoke as the woman and Lincoln struggle to put out the flames. They realize Marcus is dead and Palmer and Duckie are gone. In interrogation, Dunkel denies knowing Roth, even though he has a giant shiner. After some Gibbs yelling, Dunkel admits Roth was sleeping with his wife, Commander Lisa Cleveland. He confronted Roth, but Roth pulled a gun. They struggled, the gun went off and Dunkel ran. He denies knowing about anything else. Duckie and Palmer run through the woods, heading for the highway. At NCIS, they confirm Roth's affair with Cleveland, whom he was sleeping with for her access codes. Roth had to kill himself so his operation wouldn't be compromised if he was captured. They think Roth's handlers took the body and Duckie and Palmer. In the woods in the middle of the night, Duckie and Palmer hear gunshots. They left a message for Gibbs at the cabin, but don't know when he'll find it. Palmer snagged one of their guns in the confusion. At NCIS, McGee gets a report of the SUV at a national forest, where people asked to rent the most remote cabin two weeks ago. They run the plates and find it's registered to a shell company that uses the same bank that funded Roth's offshore account. In the woods, Duckie twists his ankle on a rock. They hear another gunshot. Duckie tells Palmer to leave him. Gibbs and the team pull into the park in the pitch dark. They find the cabin and R9 carved into Roth's foot: Rule 9, Never go anywhere without a knife. They see a scalpel stuck in a mounted animal head and head out in the direction it's pointing. In the dark, Duckie calls out for Palmer. Lincoln finds him and holds a gun on him, telling him to call for Palmer. Suddenly Palmer busts out of the woods and empties his gun into Lincoln, who drops. Jimmy's reeling from the shock when Lincoln gets to his feet and holds his gun on them. He's about to fire when Gibbs and the team find them. Another day, the woman goes to a gym and opens a locker. She finds a jersey with Palmer's name on it. The NCIS team finds her. They have the USB Roth put in a sewer drain, they didn't mention the sewage they found under his nails. The key and locker belong to Palmer. "You've been played," Duckie announces.
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A woman gets out of her shower and ends up getting stabbed in her bathroom. Gibbs gets his hair cut as a TV news reporter Bart Crowley attributes the murder to the Dead Rose Slasher. Gibbs' barber Frankie is worried about his son Cameron, who's been acting strange since he got out of the Navy. The Dead Rose Slasher sketch looks like his son. The murders started four years ago when Cameron was in college, then stopped for three years while he was in the Navy, and started when he came back home. Frankie tells Gibbs that Cameron was thrown out of college because he was accused of date rape. The charges were dropped, but Frankie is worried because Cameron wasn't home on the nights of the last two murders.Gibbs offers to look into it to put Frankie's mind at ease. At NCIS, Tony tells Probationary Agent Ned Dorneget that he has to take a newly re-instated probie test, the GS 11. Dorneget thought it wasn't given anymore, but Ziva says it's serious stuff. The team pulls up surveillance of Lance Corporal Douglas Alexander driving off the base at Norfolk three days ago with a passenger. He stole over $120,000 from the office he was assigned to. Abby has ID'd the passenger as Melissa Tourney, a civilian. The team tells Gibbs that Vance is looking for him, but Gibbs leaves. At a crime scene of a Dead Rose attempted murder, Gibbs pumps the detective for info. They have no forensics, all they know is he's left handed. So is Cameron. At NCIS, they've confirmed Melissa Tourney just flew to the Bahamas. Gibbs sends Tony and Dorneget to apprehend Anderson. Gibbs visits Duckie in the morgue, to get him to ask his Metro ME friend if there's any information to rule out a suspect in the Dead Rose Slasher case. McGee warns Dorneget not to let Tony pull rank on him on their trip. Meanwhile, Ziva and McGee look into Cameron Dean. He left college after the date rape allegation in his sophomore year. He doesn't have a criminal record. Gibbs tells them why he's looking into it. Vance drops by Gibbs' basement, bearing brownies. He got a call from chief of Metro detectives and knows Duckie talked to the Metro ME. Gibbs tells him it's not official, he's just checking something out for a friend. McGee watches Cameron Dean at a packed bar. Ziva sidles up to him at the bar. He's taking pictures of a girl in the corner and isn't interested in Ziva at all. When the girl leaves, he follows. She fits the profile of the other victims. Tony relaxes poolside in the Bahamas, on stakeout. Dorneget joins him.Melissa is hanging out by the pool, with no sign of Douglas Alexander. At NCIS, McGee and Ziva report that Cameron followed the woman home last night, then went home. Metro Detective Bill Shard drops in on Gibbs, demanding the name of his suspect. Gibbs gives him nothing. Shard chats up Ziva on his way out. Duckie reports to Gibbs that the two recent murders were the same as the ones three years ago and were committed by someone left handed, using the same knife for each. The ME told him all the victims were IV drug users, and he knows there's something they're not telling him. On the beach, Dorneget shoots down Tony's attempts to senior agent boss him. Tony notices Melissa checking him out and goes to talk to her. She thinks Tony and Dorneget are a couple. At NCIS, they watch a Crowley news report about another Dead Rose Slasher victim. Shard calls Gibbs to tell him he's picking up Cameron Dean as a suspect. He read Dean's name off Ziva's desk. Gibbs tells McGee to pick Dean up first, has Ziva check that the victim isn't the woman Dean followed and he goes to talk to his barber. Gibbs tells Frankie that they got careless and his son is going to be questioned. In interrogation at NCIS, Gibbs talks to Cameron. He says he went to look for work at a construction company first thing in the morning. Gibbs asks why he was following the woman last night. Cameron says she's the wife of an old shipmate of his who worried she might be cheating. He followed her to make sure. Detective Shard busts into the interrogation viewing room and demands NCIS release Cameron to his custody. When Gibbs joins them, Vance says Metro PD is sending over their evidence for NCIS review since they're backed up. In the Bahamas, Dorneget is buried in his NCIS regulation manual studying for the GS 11 when he looks up and sees Douglas Anderson walk into the resort. Melissa goes to meet him and Tony intercepts Anderson in the lobby. He turns to run and decks Dorneget. Anderson runs through the hotel and out onto the beach, where Tony and Dorneget manage to tackle him. Vance asks Abby to help his daughter with her science project. She's thrilled. Metro PD's forensic specialist Ramsey Boone, an old friend of Abby's, brings the Dead Rose Slasher evidence to the garage. McGee confirms Cameron's Navy friend did ask him to follow his wife, and Ziva confirms Cameron did go to the construction site looking for work. Tony and Dorneget bring Anderson back in custody and most of the money he stole. Abby and Boone plow through the evidence in her lab. Gibbs drops by with Caf Pows. Abby reports that the Slasher left a plain silver wedding band in each of his victim's mouths and only three people knew: the Metro ME, Detective Shard and Boone. Abby found the killer's DNA on a rose thorn left on the second victim. It doesn't belong to Cameron Dean; it belongs to Leo Winkler, a man who died after the early murders. The most recent ones were by a copy cat. Dorneget is psyched they're working on the Dead Rose Slasher case; he taped all the news coverage to stay up on the case while they were gone. Winkler was born to a drug addicted woman whose name was Rose, which is why he left roses on the victims. They explain why Dean couldn't have done it. Dean asks Gibbs why they suspected him. They run into his dad and Cameron walks off angry that his dad thought he was a serial killer. Gibbs goes after him and urges him to talk to him. Vance and Gibbs ask Shard who else could have known about the wedding rings in the victims' mouths. Shard realizes he gave a redacted report on the Slasher to the TV reporter covering the case, Bart Crowley. McGee reviews the documents and finds Shard missed blacking out one reference to the wedding band in the file. Crowley didn't have any major stories during the three year murder lull, but now he's back in the spotlight. They go to check where he was yesterday morning. Vance finds Dorneget studying for his GS 11 exam and tells him they haven't given that test for years. Ziva only went along because Tony pulled the same stunt with her and she studied for three months. Vance suggests they teach Tony a lesson. Up in NCIS, Ziva finds Bart Crowley's car was parked two blocks away from yesterday's crime scene. His cell phone was off during the time of the murder.Dorneget volunteers that Crowley is left handed. Shard goes to get a warrant and Dorneget leaves an important-looking inter office memo envelope on Tony's desk. Crowley gives a report on the latest murder when Gibbs and Shard pull up and interrupt. They tell him about the copycat and that they just found roses, rings and a knife in the suspect's apartment - his. Crowley's camera crew records his arrest. Tony comes in in the morning and opens his memo, his Bahamas expense report. It's been rejected and he's being audited for the past two years. Frankie cuts Gibbs hair again. Cameron comes in as Gibbs leaves. Gibbs watches the men talk and calls his dad.
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Open in a war zone as a bomb-sniffing dog helps get a kid out of a mine field. Just after the child is rescued the dog's handler is shot by an unseen sniper. The team discusses Vance having trouble picking a nanny for his kid. A woman drops by looking for Gibbs. She is the wife of Ted, the man killed in Kabul in the opening. The military has told her he was killed by an enemy sniper, but she shows him a message he sent her about having done something stupid that "will piss some people off." It was sent the day before his death. Ducky says the cause of death was a sniper wound and he's not sure the distance. The helmet trapped a small piece of metal. Abby looks at the metal shard which is part of a armor-piercing alloy produced in the United States. The team tells Gibbs that a James Virgil witnessed Ted's death. Word is that Ted's station had recently lost several clips of ammo. Virgil tells the team he never saw the sniper, just heard it. He says Ted and his dog Dex helped save their lives. Virgil gets angry when he's asked if Ted had any enemies. Virgil said he had recently offered him a job and that Ted didn't want any trouble. Gibbs asks Ted's widow if he had any issues at work, anything on the base with other Marines. She says he was easy-going, then starts to talk about a fight he'd had at the base six months earlier. It was with a trainer named Pit who Ted thought had been rough with Dex. Since he's only four, Dex will be headed by to the war. Vance meets with yet another potential nanny. The team tells Gibbs that Pit's real name is Norman. He's a 61-year old civilian contractor, the Marines' dog whisperer who recently returned to the states. The incident report said that punches were thrown and the two were ordered to stay away from one another. McGee and Anthony stop by to see Norman, who immediately lets two attack dogs lose on them. Norman is brought to NCIS where he's questioned by McGee and Anthony. He says Ted was too overprotective of Dex but assures them there was no bad blood. He says he recommended Ted for the post he had because he thought him and Dex were "top shelf." Vance interviews one more nanny, a young one with a social media obsession. Afterwards he tells Gibbs the whole nanny idea was a huge mistake. Gibbs gives him a brief update on the Ted case. Ted's widow brings Dex to the office. She shows Gibbs an expensive-looking necklace she received from him in the mail. It was dated two weeks ago. Abby analyzing the necklace and finds the goal and jewels are real. The design seems Middle Eastern. Gibbs walks Ted's widow home and she thanks him for his help. She goes inside and Dex begins growling. He goes after a robber and is able to pull something out of hand and force him to drop jewelry. Gibbs doesn't think the intruder was after the jewels. The team figures out the pendant on the necklace contains the crest of a wealthy Afghani family who owned a jewelry shop but has left the country for Pakistan. It's worth about $9,000. Gibbs tells Vance he thinks the team should go to Afghanistan. He takes McGee and Dex. The NCIS team arrives in Afghanistan and is told they believe they've found the sniper. He was killed and the Marines say it was Virgil and his contractors. Back in the states Ziva talks to Vance about his nanny choice. He admits being worried that hiring someone will make it feel like he's moving on and make his wife's death more final. She tells him to use his own timeline. Gibbs thinks the sniper would have targeted the dog before he would the handler. Virgil and another military contractor tell Gibbs the Marines were the ones who got the sniper. They both say they heard the shot come from the mountain, which is where the Taliban were rounded up. Gibbs tells him what they heard was the echo and the sniper is still at large. Abby finds a dog hair on the shirt sleeve Dex ripped off the attacker. It's from a Doberman, the same breed Norman has. It turns out Norman's uncle was the one who tried to break into Ted's place. He was working with someone to bring back jewels from Afghanistan but won't give Ziva a name. Ted's replacement want to take Dex to a few locations Virgil says need sniffed out. Gibbs tells him to hold on. Instead Gibbs and McGee bring Virgil to the location. They've figured out that Virgil was having Dex help clear buildings of bombs so they could take valuables left behind. Virgil gave Ted the pendant to try and buy him off and then had Norman's nephew try to steal it back to cover his tracks. Virgil's buddy, a former special forces sniper, was the one who killed Ted. When he realizes he's been found out the man pulls a gun on Gibbs. Dex helps save the day and Gibbs shoots the man. It appears that Dex is hit. A final nanny candidate named Laura shows up at Vance's office. When he tells her he's no longer hiring she calls him out for wasting the time of some of her fellow nannies. She says she sympathizes with his plight but assures him she would never try to replace their mother. He then asks her to meet his kids. After Ted's funeral Gibbs speaks with his widow. She says Ted would have liked to know that Dex helped. He tells her Dex was shot and has been officially retired. She is overjoyed.
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On a ship at sea in a storm, a captain gets a report of a person above deck. Two men are sent out in the pounding surf to look for whoever is out there. They strap in to the ship's cables and see a man prone on the deck. He's not moving. It's the doctor and he's dead. In the office, Tony and Ziva wonder why McGee might be late. Gibbs arrives with the body of the week aboard the USS Borealis. Cut to McGee in his car with a kid named Adam, volunteering as a Big Brother. He's driving Adam to his field trip in Colonial Williamsburg because his mom is sick. Aboard the destroyer, the body has been moved -- by their old pal NCIS Special Agent Stan Burley (Joel Gretsch). McGee arrives an hour and 46 minutes late, apologizing. Below, Duckie finds a puncture wound on the victim's neck. The officer on board, Navy Lieutenant Carlton Mane, wants to talk to Gibbs. He's an admiral's aide and worried about keeping his admiral on schedule. Gibbs informs him the admiral can't leave the ship crime scene. The admiral arrives to talk to Gibbs himself. McGee sees who it is with interest.It's his dad. He reiterates what Gibbs said that no one can leave until they finish investigating."Understandable, but I have some place I have to be," says dad McGee (Jamey Sheridan)."Been hearing that my whole life," replies young McGee."Good to see you, too, son." McGee sits down with his dad, John, and Gibbs. He was on two other carriers before the Borealis and boarded during battle exercises. As Gibbs asks questions, John turns on his son and critiques him. McGee says his dad was never there and his family was the Navy. Ziva and Burley question Petty Officer Graves, who tells them Haber was about to come forward about a crew member's illegal drug use of an amphetamine/ADHD drug cocktail used to stay awake, but he doesn't know who. Back at NCIS, Vance tells Gibbs that Sec-Nav said Admiral McGee should be allowed to leave the ship because he's on the fast track for a cabinet appointment. Gibbs isn't a fan. On the ship, Burley asks Ziva how the investigation into her father's death is going. They still don't have suspects. They find Dr. Haber's medical records of the crew. Stan and Ziva pair off to investigate and Tony thinks he sees some sparks. Gibbs joins Duckie and Palmer in the lab. They found a piece of a broken needle in his neck and are waiting on the tox reports from Abby. Duckie finds it surprising that the attacker was able to hit Haber's carotid artery during the rough squall. Back at NCIS, Tony worries that Burley might be preying on Ziva when she's vulnerable. Tony reports Petty Officer First Class Wyeth made repeated trips to sick bay for minor issues. He has a juvy drug record and has been under suspicion for drug use since being in the Navy. Back on the ship to talk to Wyeth, Tony gently warns Burley to go easy with Ziva. But Burley tells him he's engaged. They see Wyeth -- and he runs. They chase him through the ship and he sneaks up on Burley and decks him. Tony drops him. Back at NCIS with Wyeth in interrogation, Tony has blood results that show he's on five different drugs. Tony notices he has the shakes -- and couldn't possibly have hit Haber's carotid. Down in the lab, Abby tries to stab a dummy in the carotid and can't do it. The needle used on Haber contained a slow-acting strychnine that led to paralysis and eventually asphyxiation. She thinks whoever did it must have been very skilled. Abby encourages Tim to stand up to his dad. "Abby, he's the admiral, no one talks to him, they just listen," McGee says. Upstairs, McGee's "little brother" Adam oogles Ziva. He took the bus from Williamsburg. He was supposed to share a motel room with a bully. McGee encourages him to stand up to him. Back on the destroyer, Burley has found surveillance of Haber being jabbed in the neck, but the attacker's face is obscured. Footage also shows Petty Officer Graves sneaking into Haber's office and removing data from his computer. Graves tried to be a SEAL and excelled in hand to hand combat, but couldn't handle the psych pressure. They wonder if he was selling drugs to the crew. Vance sits down with John McGee and asks about Tim's status at NCIS. "I want to know if he'll ever amount to anything more than an overpaid paper-pusher," dad says. "Special Agent McGee is a valuable asset to this team. As a Navy officer and as a father, you should proud of what your son has accomplished," Vance says. McGee doesn't respond when Vance asks why he suddenly cares. On the ship, Graves didn't report for duty. Burley gets a call that an ambulance is waiting to pick up a crew member with a ruptured appendix. They find Graves in back, having faked it. Back in interrogation, Gibbs tells him half the crew gave him up. He says he was trying to get rid of the paper trail on the doctor's computer. He doesn't have an answer for why he first told them about the drugs. In the office late at night, Gibbs commends McGee for working with Adam. McGee says he was thinking about moving on from it because he doesn't have the time. Gibbs encourages him to "let him know who you are."McGee wonders if Gibbs is talking about his dad or Adam. McGee calls his dad to go for a walk. His dad knows how much his mom hates it when they fight, but they don't resolve anything. At the office, they find a $10,000 payment to Graves. They track the missing sign in log -- on a tablet -- to John Hamilton University. On campus, McGee and Tony track the tablet and Tony brings up fathers. "The fact is, fathers start out as heroes and they end up disappointing," Tony says. McGee doesn't think his dad will ever understand him. They track the tablet to a pick-up basketball game where one of the players turns it over. He found it in the trash yesterday. Back at NCIS, McGee checks out the tablet. The last to sign in was Henry Newbolt, which McGee immediately recognizes as the name of his dad's favorite poet. He used a pseudonym to see the doctor. McGee tries to discourage Gibbs from bringing his dad in, but Gibbs insists. In interrogation, John McGee says he was with his staff the entire time on the ship. The admiral gets indignant when Gibbs asks about the phony sign-in, then asks who's on the other side of the interrogation glass, if Tim is. "You make him think he's nothing, you're the one with nothing," Gibbs says. Gibbs asks why he'd lie. "Because I'm sick, no one could know. Stage 4," he says. He didn't feel well when they started the exercises so he transferred to see Haber, but Haber was going to report his illness, which would mean the end of his career. Gibbs points out that could give him motive, but he doesn't really mean it. Watching from the other side, Tim cries as he learns about his dad's illness. Ziva, Tony and Gibbs talk to Vance. They wonder who would have motive to keep the admiral's illness quiet and was close enough to know about it. Tony goes to look into the admiral's aide, Carlton Mane, but Vance offers his own computer. Mane's a former intel officer who worked black ops. There's a letter in his file from the admiral requesting Mane go with him to the White House if he's appointed. Gibbs, McGee and John McGee confront Mane, who says John McGee treated him like family. John McGee asks him outright why he killed Haber. Mane says he had to do something to keep Haber quiet. "You taught me that commitment to success comes first," Mane says."I was wrong," says John McGee. Back at NCIS, McGee is thinking about calling his dad to talk. And he's staying on as Adam's big brother. Gibbs says it might be time for McGee's dad to learn from him. He gets a call from his dad. They go for another walk. McGee asks if the rest of his family knows and suggests he call his mom. John McGee says Tim's mother would like them just talking a walk together.
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Noah Daniels' wife Callie comes home from her business trip and finds their living room trashed and her husband's phone on the floor. There's a blood trail on the floor and the back door is open. Her neighbor Ben comes in, the back door has been open all morning. Noah is gone. At the office, Tony is alarmed that Ziva is five minutes late. She thinks something's up with her. Gibbs comes in with the case of the week: a Naval officer's husband has gone missing. Vance tells Gibbs that Homeland has called twice about Ziva looking into her father's murder. At the Daniels' house, neighbor Ben describes an older model sedan with tinted windows he saw outside the house. McGee finds Noah's severed finger in the trash. Back at the morgue, Duckie works up a psych profile and kicks Palmer out, but Palmer protests and Duckie agrees to teach him. Upstairs, they learn Callie was working on a classified case and just got back from San Diego.They find Noah Daniels being driven away on a traffic cam at 2:15 a.m. Gibbs visits Abby in the garage, where she has recreated the crime scene. The attacker didn't violently enter the house. The blood on the couch indicates his finger was cut off there. She hasn't found any prints. The finger was severed surgically at the joint. She found a second blood type on the floor. Gibbs and Ziva update Callie. She talked to Noah at 10 p.m. from on the road, he was watching the news and playing the computer. They find bank records showing Noah had more than $2 million in trust from his dad's business. Callie says Noah would never give up the money because his father worked too hard for it. Callie gets a call from Noah. They hear a voice say "meet me or he dies" then Noah saying it's a trap, then what could be gunshots. They trace the call and find the sedan Noah was abducted in. There's blood inside, but no Noah. The car is registered to Landers Orton from Roanoke. Gibbs and Tony talk to him back in interrogation. He says he thinks his brother Darryl might be involved. He lent Darryl his car and Darryl took his debit card. Back in the office, frazzled Callie lashes out at Gibbs. Darryl Orton has been in and out of jail, including for assault with a deadly weapon. There are multiple charges to a Mexican restaurant where Noah Daniels also went at the same time. Ziva talks to Callie in the restroom, assuring her they'll find him. Callie confesses that things have been bad between them. Ziva and Tony check out the restaurant and talk to the owner (Lourdes Benedicto), she recognizes photos of Noah and Darryl and knows Noah recently came into money.Ziva takes a call in Hebrew, Tony is suspicious. In the morgue, Duckie explains that Darryl isn't afraid to die and craves a sense of belonging and a real family. They think he went home to his brother in southwestern Virginia. Vance meets with Tom Morrow from Homeland Security, former head of NCIS. He tells Leon that CIA also knows Ziva is looking into her father's death. Morrow says recent intel says the man who orchestrated her father's murder, Mossad Deputy Director Ilan Bodnar was last seen in Rome. He assures Vance they're handling it. They find that Daniels' bank account has been emptied, even though the FBI froze it. Darryl opened an account with $37,000 -- he's spreading the money around, too complex a scheme for a high school drop out. Gibbs visits Abby again, who says the rugs and walls should be roughed up but because they aren't, it means Noah was carried out unconscious, which means Darryl had help. Darryl Orton's brother has an alibi. They get a tip that leads to a hotel. Tony, Ziva and Gibbs check it out and find Darryl Orton dead with a gun beside the bed. He left a note: "Sorry to all I hurt. He's dead, I threw his body in the Potomac." Back in the morgue, Duckie says the gunshot wasn't self-inflicted, it was a staged suicide. Back at NCIS, Abby brings up a picture that was found on the floor. The frame would be cracked if it fell, but it wasn't.Also, the tipped over couch was solid oak and couldn't have just been knocked over. The crime scene was staged. They think Noah Daniels staged his own abduction.They play the phone tip and Tony and Ziva recognize the restaurant owner's voice. They pay her a visit. It's her second restaurant to fall into debt. They have phone records linking them. They think she cut his finger off since she had culinary training.She says no one was supposed to get hurt and they were just supposed to get away.She agrees to cooperate. Gibbs and McGee find Noah Daniels on a bus out of town. Callie confronts him, but he doesn't have anything to say. Ziva takes Callie's hurt personally. Back at the office late at night, Tony continues to worry about how Ziva is handling her father's death. Gibbs gives him permission to look into it, telling him to go find her. Tony goes to Abby to ping Ziva's cell phone. Abby leads him to a dingy apartment building. He knocks on the door and is shocked to find McGee already there. They have an entire investigation set up on the walls. They explain they were going to tell Tony.Ziva explains there have been sightings of Bodner throughout Europe. Ziva resolves not to stop until she finds him. Tony asks when she's going to tell Gibbs. Back at the office, Ziva asks for permission to go to Europe to find him. Gibbs knew she was looking into, but was waiting for her to tell him. He tells her Bodner's in Rome and suggests she take Tony. Vance also gives his blessing.
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An Israeli operative waits in a parked car in a garage. An SUV pulls up to meet him, he's surprised to see who's behind the wheel.Then the driver shoots him. At NCIS, Tony rubs his trip in McGee's face. Gibbs arrives and announces that Tony and Ziva won't be going to Rome to track Ilan Bodnar, the man suspected of killing Ziva's father. They're going to Berlin. Ziva is annoyed to see Orli Elbaz (Marina Sirtis) from Mossad arrive in the office. She's the new head of Mossad, there to meet Vance.She lays out the body of the week: Amir Mantel, an agent in town off the books. Five officers went rogue in support of Bodnar and Mantel thought one was in Virginia. She thinks they're a threat to anyone looking to Bodnar. She asks NCIS to lead the investigation. Ziva asks permission to leave. Orli thinks she's heading to Rome. Gibbs visits Abby and the murder scene car in the garage. The victim is in a body bag in the trunk. Mossad cleaned the crime scene, handing over a laptop and watch. En route to Berlin, Ziva remembers seeing her dad fighting with a woman when she was a child. Ziva explains they're going to Berlin because her father taught her to set up a network of diamonds in case she ever needed to disappear. Everyone else is tracking Bodnar's bank accounts, but Ziva found a spike in diamond sales in Berlin. Back at NCIS, in the morgue, Duckie is annoyed that Mossad stuffed their own agent in the trunk for transportation. He finds a rubber earwig piece in Mantel's ear. Abby video conferences in to report the bullet is a.9 mm, the same kind Mossad intel shows the rogue operatives bought.Duckie doesn't like that they're working with Mossad. Gibbs meets with Orli, who worries what Ziva may have told him about her. Gibbs and McGee head to Mantel's hotel room, which was also scrubbed by Mossad. The hotel manager thinks he recognized Tomir Gottleib, one of the rogue agents. Gibbs notices they're being watched, but the green SUV takes off. Gibbs goes back to Orli for more information, thinking Mossad is hanging NCIS out as target. He warns her away from his crime scene. Vance meets with Homeland Senior Division Chief Tom Morrow (Alan Dale), who isn't happy NCIS is working with Mossad. He also knows Tony and Ziva are in Berlin. In Berlin, Ziva remembers saying good bye to her father as he left for a work trip. She takes a call from her contact, who has information. Ziva and Tony wait for her contact, Adam Eshel, an attractive man who Tony seems to instantly distrust. Ziva looks at pictures that Adam emailed her of a hired courier known as "K." He used Bodnar's ID to empty safety deposit boxes and Adam has heard there's a hand-off tonight. Ziva gets a video call from a number she recognizes. It's Ilan Bodnar. Tony calls McGee to run a trace. Bodnar tells Ziva she doesn't know the whole story about her father's death. He asks her to forgive him and walk away. McGee traces the signal to a subway station around the corner from them in Berlin. They head there and look for him. McGee sees his signal on the train, but he loses it. Tony and Ziva chat with Gibbs and McGee back in MTAC and update them on K. Facial recognition IDs him as Edward Kraus, a drug trafficker who works at a nightclub.Ziva warns Gibbs not to trust Orli unless she earns it. Back in their room in Berlin, Ziva hangs up Tony's clothes and he reminds her of the time he called her "sweet cheeks" -- in Paris. They flirt about how she likes to hang up clothes for her man. He invites her to share the bed for a nap, but nothing happens. In the lab, Abby updates Gibbs on the earwig piece -- an old model Mossad doesn't use any more. His laptop was full of planted useless intel. Up in Vance's office, he directs McGee to hack Mossad's database. They find Mantel was actually the rogue agent. Orli lied. Gibbs and Vance talk to Orli in interrogation, confronting her with their hacked intel. He was the only rogue officer. Vance is annoyed she put people on his people following them on a case that doesn't exist. She gets up to leave, but Vance refuses to let her go. At the nightclub where Edward Kraus works, Tony orders them martinis then pulls Ziva onto the dance floor as the music turns slow. Ziva keeps an eye on Kraus as they sway, but she worries that he might have made her.Tony tells her to just act like she's there with him. She looks deep into his eyes and remembers her father telling her that one day she'll dance with a man who deserves her love. Ziva sees Edward make a handoff to someone. She thinks it's Ilan, but is surprised to find it's Yaniv Bodnar, Ilan's brother. Back in interrogation, Gibbs tells Orli that Bodnar was just arrest in Berlin. Orli asks for her phone to confirm. Gibbs accuses Orli of bringing them a dummy case to get Mossad permission to be on US soil. She admits it and Gibbs tells her it was Yaniv Bodnar who was arrested. On the return flight home, Ziva asks Yaniv what Ilan did to win him back. Yaniv isn't Mossad. Orli turns over all their intel on Ilan to Vance and Tom Morrow. They have surveillance footage from the airport showing Yaniv switching clothes with Ilan and boarding the flight overseas. They let everyone believe Ilan was in Rome so he'd let his guard down. Vance suggests NCIS look the other way about Mossad's actions, but warns Orli it's the last pass Mossad gets. He plans to have her escorted out of the country. Tony and Ziva drive back after dropping Yaniv off with federal Marshals. Ziva tells Tony that Orli was the reason her parents split up. She thinks Orli is after Ilan because she loved Ziva's father. Ziva thinks if not for Orli, she might be a different person.Tony takes Ziva's hand and interlaces his fingers with hers."Then I should catch her before she leaves, and thank her," Tony says. As they're driving through an intersection, an SUV barrels through and slams into them Squarely on the Passenger's side where Ziva is sitting. We see their hands, and broken glass and blood. Tony's, (Michael Weatherly), hand is seen moving and nudges Ziva's hand, (Cote de Pablo); however there is no response. Ziva's hand is not moving.
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Tony and Ziva's car is T-boned in an intersection. She comes to as someone walks toward their car. Tony is out cold. Ziva watches groggily as Ilan Bodnar, the man she's been hunting for killing her father, leans into her car and takes something. "I told you to walk away Ziva," he says.Another car pulls up and he gets in and drives off. Ziva gets off a few shots but manages only to shoot out the rear windshield. Vance and Gibbs wait for Tony and Ziva in the emergency room. Bodnar took the diamonds. Ziva got a partial plate of the getaway car, it's registered to a soccer mom. Gibbs, McGee and a team head to the house and surround it, shouting for whoever is inside to come out. When they don't, the agents fire a flash bang in. The person inside starts shooting with an automatic weapon. The NCIS team riddles the house with bullets. Inside, there's a dead body in the kitchen -- not Bodnar. Tony and Ziva sneak out of the ER and head back to the office. Tony has a message from his insurance agent with bad news. He's being put on the at risk list after totaling his third car. At the house, they find the victim's ID, Carl Miller, is fake and he has no finger prints. A piece of paper in his pocket says "see Reisiger 19." He has a few diamonds in his pocket; payment for helping Bodnar. Down in the garage, Abby is going over the SUV that hit Ziva and Tony. There was a harness installed and the airbag was removed; the crash was planned. Ziva peppers Abby with questions about where everyone else is. Gibbs talks to Miller's landlord, who says he drove a motorcycle and would sometimes be gone months at a time. Back at NCIS, Homeland Senior Division Chief Tom Morrow is annoyed Vance OK'd the raid without telling him. He says the search for Bodnar should be left to Homeland. Ziva and McGee check international databases and get nothing on the name Reisiger. Tony ducks a call from his insurance agency, making Abby answer. They're canceling his policy if he doesn't call them back in 24 hours. Down in the morgue, Duckie hasn't gotten anywhere on identifying the body. Miller's had tons of plastic surgery and his teeth were all replaced. Down in the lab, Abby is trying to figure out how long Bodnar was at the house. There's a beer bottle with the finger print of Amir Mantel, the rogue Mossad agent who was killed. Ziva ignores her injured shoulder and works out her aggression on a heavy bag. Tony complains that McGee wouldn't stop for coffee on their drive in from work. Ziva lends Tony her car; she's planning to jog into work the next few days. Tony is still sore and achy from the accident, but Ziva is powering through the pain. Police find Miller's motorcycle near Union Station. Down in the morgue, Duckie has been able to trace the serial number of his jaw implant. Dr. Madison Fielding installed it. Tony and McGee visit Dr. Fielding, the plastic surgeon. He did Miller's surgery three years ago. There was nothing wrong with him and he paid in cash. They look at the before photo -- he looked completely different. At the office, Ziva gets a video call from Bodnar, who says her father was selling out Mossad and Israel to Iran. He denies killing Arash Kazmi and says others are responsible for killing the Iranian.Ziva vows to find him. Abby IDs Carl Miller as South African Clive Goddard, whom she ID'd from his "before" photo through facial recognition. He's involved in blood diamond smuggling. McGee analyzes the trees and lamp post in background of the video chat from Bodnar. He's in New York. Vance tells Ziva they have to let Homeland handle things. In MTAC, Vance tells Morrow they think Bodnar is in New York. Vance tells Morrow the case is all his, but after they hang up Gibbs notes Vance didn't tell him what Bodnar said about Kazmi. Later that night, Ziva's Shin Bet contact Adam sends her a photo of Bodnar and Goddard together from five years ago. McGee stays late to check on something. In the middle of the night, Tony drops by Gibbs' basement to talk. He's worried about Ziva, she's been more secretive since her father's death. Gibbs knows she wants revenge. He asks if there's anything Tony didn't tell him about Berlin, but Gibbs' phone rings before Tony answers. McGee calls and Tony and Gibbs go to the office. He thought there was something wrong with the video and it turns out there was, Bodnar pasted himself into a YouTube video. He's not in New York. In the morning, Tony catches Ziva up. The boys were at the office all night. Tony goes down to the morgue to stop the release of Goddard's body. Duckie waxes about the Afrikaans language and Tony wonders if Reisiger might be Afrikaans. Palmer looks "See Reisiger" up on his phone app and learns it means "Sea Voyager." Vance finishes an unpleasant call with Tom Morrow, who thinks NCIS mislead them to New York. Vance isn't backing off. Upstairs they find Sea Voyager is a Liberian freighter docked in the Port of Baltimore in Pier 19, leaving for South Africa tonight. Tony and McGee go to tell Gibbs. Ziva takes her gun and car keys and leaves. At the Port at night, Ziva grabs a flare from her trunk and uses it to start a Dumpster fire near the gangplank. The man guarding it goes to check out the fire and Ziva boards the ship. Down in the hold she hears Bodnar. She confronts him with her personal gun. He knows she won't shoot an unarmed man in the back and walks away. He gets out onto the deck and jumps her. They start fighting, grabbing nearby tools and a fire extinguisher to go after each other. Ilan gets her around the neck with a chain, but she flips him off and gets back on top, punching him. Gibbs and the team pull up, wondering if the fire is Ziva's doing. Ilan's body falling over the side of the ship is their answer. Later, back at NCIS, a battered Ziva goes to see Vance."Is it over?" he asks."It's over," she says.
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A Navy seaman chases a man through a park at Quantico and tackles him. Sailors training nearby pull him off. Someone watching the whole scene on surveillance chooses not to intervene. At NCIS, Ziva pulls up to work in her new sports car, she thought it was time for a change. Tony is upset she sold the Mini to someone else.Gibbs pulls up to get McGee for the case of the week. At Quantico, the attacker is Petty Officer third class Evan Lowry. He tells Gibbs that the man he tackled was following him and someone has been going through his email, too, and been in his house. He's a cook on a ship and thinks someone might be trying to infect him to infect the crew. He's insistent, but McGee and Gibbs are skeptical. McGee notices a GPS tracking device on Lowry's car. Someone really is following him. Back at NCIS, they try to figure out who might be following him. They're looking into his mugging two weeks ago, when the surveillance started and he was hit by a tire iron and got a concussion. His laptop and cell phone were stolen. McGee traces a photo that was taken on Lowry's phone. Richard Parsons (Colin Hanks), with the Inspector General's Office, meets with Vance to start the inquiry to Ilan Bodnar's death. Vance is eager to get it over with. Parsons goes with McGee and Tony on a stakeout to watch the phone. Parsons starts his questioning about the night Eli David was killed. Tony and McGee go intercept a man on the stolen cell phone. He runs. Back in interrogation, Lowry isn't sure if it's the guy who mugged him.The suspect tells Gibbs he found the phone in the trash. Gibbs bluffs him and believes the guy knows nothing. Abby finds a piece of a legal document that was left in Lowry's backpack, releasing them from any physical and mental trauma to Lowry. He signed it, but has no idea what it is. Down in the morgue, Duckie tries to help Lowry remember signing the document. He remembers whatever he signed up for had something to do with bratwurst, the same blend as was found in a recent morgue victim's stomach. In the lab, Abby cooks up various bratwursts, explaining to Parsons how she'll test them. He's a forensic know it all. He asks her about the memory card she processed five months ago that had a picture of the man who killed Tyler Wilkes, Eli David, even though they could only see the back of his head in the photo. Ziva recognized him. Gibbs goes with Lowry to a food cart with brats. He recognizes a nearby empty warehouse. There's an office inside, with a guy eating the brat Lowry remembered. A woman comes out and IDs Lowry as one of their "helping eyes" test subjects. They're examining the psychological effects of surveillance, which started right after he got mugged. Lowry is angry until he learns he's getting $1,500. Gibbs is annoyed and wants Tony and Ziva look into the doctor running the study. Back at NCIS, Parsons talks to Ziva in interrogation. He asks why she waited three hours to tell Gibbs her dad was the one in the photos; she wanted to talk to her father first.Ziva insists she tried to save Bodnar, but he fell. Parsons starts yelling, asking her if she slept with Adam Eshel from Shin Bet, saying it would be a threat to national security. Ziva tells Parsons to go to hell. Tony busts in and ends the interview. Back up in the office, they see on the news that there was an explosion at the office where the experiment was being run.At the scene, Ziva admits to Tony she slept with Adam when she went to Israel to bury her father. She says she felt alone and it was a moment of weakness. He reminds her when he dropped her off at the airport he told her in Hebrew that she wasn't alone. He tells her to talk to legal. All the surveillance footage was destroyed in the blast, Dr. Hale received minor injuries. Duckie calls Gibbs after talking to Parsons. The team meets, he warns them Parsons is looking to dig up dirt on Ziva. He has an old photo of her friend Schmiel. She didn't know he once worked for the Israeli government in September 1972, after the Munich killings. Duckie thinks it's a witch hunt. Back in the office, McGee hacks Parsons files, including a locked Justice Department file. Back to the explosion, they find Simon Gravy, one of the test subjects, has disappeared. Tony and McGee watch the footage of Gravy in MTAC. Ziva knocks to get in, her retina scan was denied. Her security clearance has been suspended. Tony follows Parsons. Ziva reports to McGee that Parsons is looking into their old case files, including some before Ziva got there. Tony warns Parsons not to question Ziva's loyalty. "What makes you think I'm going after Ziva?" Parsons says. Ziva realizes the common thread in the files Parsons pulled: Vance. Ziva, Tony and Gibbs brief Vance. They think Parsons is trying to get leverage on Ziva to get her to flip on Vance. Tony put a surveillance bug on Parsons phone. Gibbs talks to Gravy, the surveillance arson suspect, in interrogation. He emptied his bank account an hour ago. Tony thinks Gravy's off his meds. He says he knows who blew up the building -- God. He has an emotional meltdown but denies blowing up the building. He wonders what kind of an idiot would get into trouble knowing he was being followed. Someone who didn't remember they were: Lowry.Gibbs finds Lowry at lunch with a woman named Stella and her toddler, Abner. Gibbs knows she's UA (the Navy's AWOL) -- they ran facial recognition on everyone Lowry came in contact with and ID'd Stella as a corporal. When he remembered the study he realized he'd exposed Stella, so he set the fire to destroy the surveillance with her in it. Ziva leads Lowry away and Stella explains she got called for her third tour shortly after Abner was born and didn't want to go. "Haven't you ever bent the rules for a friend?" she asks Gibbs. McGee listens to Parsons make a phone call and runs to Gibbs. McGee is explaining that Parsons isn't after Ziva or Vance when serious looking men get off the elevator with Parsons.Parsons knew he was being bugged."Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, you've manipulated evidence and you've obstructed justice. Do you take full responsibility for the actions of your team?" Parsons asks."What do you think?" Gibbs says.
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Gibbs fishes in a boat on a lake and imagines talking to his late mentor Mike Franks. They have a meaning-heavy conversation about catch and release then Mike takes out his gun and shoots into the water. Gibbs sees bodies float up around him, his team stands on the shoreline. Gibbs' reverie is broken by DOD IG Investigator Richard Parsons (Colin Hanks), questioning him in the conference room. He says Gibbs' actions have been "inappropriate" and the deaths of Eli David and Jackie Vance have opened doors to an investigation. "Step up, take responsibility. I'll leave your people alone. All I want is the truth," Parsons says."You weren't there," Gibbs tells him. Tom Morrow hangs out in Vance's office, complaining about Parsons. Vance doesn't understand why he's not the one in the crosshairs. "Parsons recognizes the political fallout of going after a man who's lost everything because of his agent's poor judgment.... To an investigator like Parsons, Gibbs is a hell of a trophy," Morrow says. Back with Parsons, Gibbs' lawyer arrives, even though he didn't call him. Rear Admiral AJ Chegwidden, the former judge advocate general, arrives. Vance called him, he and Gibbs go way back. DCIS comes and takes NCIS's old files. Gibbs tells the team to back off, but they decide to ignore him and look into Parsons. In the lab, Abby takes out her aggressions on a shooter video game with Parsons as the target.Duckie and Palmer stop by to show her a listening device they found in the morgue. A judge gives AJ 48 hours to get a defense prepped for Gibbs. The whole NCIS staff meets in the elevator. Palmer found another bug in the ladies room. Vance asks if anyone knows anything else that could hurt Gibbs. Abby mentions all the stuff at Gibbs' house. Gibbs and AJ return Gibbs' place to see the place trashed. Gibbs draws his gun when he hears a noise, but it's just Ziva coming in the back door. AJ wants to go somewhere secure to talk. Gibbs takes AJ, Tony and Ziva to the cabin he built in the woods. They go inside when a helicopter circles overhead. Later at night, AJ reads Parsons' bio. There's a knock at the cabin door, McGee joins them with the body of the week: a dead Navy SEAL in Virginia. At the crime scene, the victim's wife came home to a box shipped from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with Chad McBride's head in it. In the morgue, Duckie and Palmer examine the head.Palmer announces he and his wife are adopting. Then he takes out a Gieger counter and it goes crazy detecting radiation. Out in the woods, Gibbs imagines hunting with Mike, who talks to him about not being able to control every little thing. Gibbs takes aim at something and imagines seeing Vance breaking the news that Jackie is dead. Gibbs wakes up to AJ bringing coffee. At the office, Parsons gets on the elevator with Ziva, who ignores him as he tells her he's trying to catch bad guys just like her, "good people who have made bad decisions." He accuses her of throwing Bodnar off the ship and killing her brother, Ari (which she did) and says she'll have to pay. In MTAC, Vance talks to Capt. Wayne, McBride's CO. He says McBride was on top secret recon and seems surprised about the radiation. He tells Vance not to tell anyone about it. In the lab, Abby says McBride was beaten with a stick. Upstairs, McGee finds Parsons has tons of secure files, including sensitive personal documents belonging to high level justice department people. Out at the cabin, AJ asks about all the people Gibbs' team has killed. Gibbs has no regrets. Parsons meets with Vance in his office. Parsons mentions a missing file: the one with Abby's results on a Mexican shooting (the one that proves Gibbs shot the man who killed his wife and daughter). At the cabin, Tony, Ziva and McGee present their intel on Parsons, including the fact he's essentially a blackmailer. They want Vance to show it to the Inspector General, but Gibbs tells them to stay out of it."It is not your job!" Gibbs says. "This is not about my job, it is about my family," Ziva says and storms out. Tony follows her. She tells him she's sorry if she hurt him, she cares too much about their friendship. She doesn't want it to be awkward."Nothing's awkward between friends," he tells her and kisses her on the forehead. Vance meets with Morrow, who tells him there's a connection between McBride's death and what's happening with his team. The CIA needed Iran to believe Mossad was responsible for Arash Kazmi's death, as a distraction. Bodnar didn't kill Kazmi -- the CIA did so that Bodnar would be a fall guy and Iran and Israel could fight while the US focused on domestic threats. Parsons doesn't know anything about it.Vance asks about McBride."It's not good, Leo," Morrow says. Back at his ransacked house, Gibbs imagines Mike Franks accusing him of running. Mike tells Gibbs he should come clean and admit there are good reasons he did the things he did. Back at NCIS, the team is surprised to see Gibbs come in. Gibbs isn't surprised when Vance tells him the CIA was behind Kazmi's death. Gibbs doesn't plan to fight by Parsons' rules. Vance says Morrow might have a solution, but it might kill Gibbs. Alone later, Vance shreds Abby's report on Gibbs' Mexico shooting. McGee, Tony and Ziva talk and agree to do what's necessary, even though Tony warns Ziva she might not like how it ends.They go upstairs and all resign, turning in their badges. Back at his house, Gibbs opens a hidden compartment in his basement and takes out Mike Franks' old files. He burns them one by one, refusing to play Parsons' blackmail game. The next morning, AJ, Vance, Morrow and Wayne with JSOC show up to meet with Parsons. Gibbs is on special assignment for JSOC. Morrow presents Parsons with a letter from his Inspector General boss telling him to back off the investigation. Once the team resigned, Gibbs was sent on assignment. "Is agent Gibbs so valuable that you would allow this to happen?" Parsons asks. Four Months Later In a dark room at night, Gibbs tries to stop Wayne's bleeding, but Wayne urges him to "do it." Gibbs goes to the window, lines up his sniper rifle and takes aim at someone getting out of a town car on the street below. Agent Tobias Fornell ends up in his rifle sights. Gibbs pauses. The screen goes black. We hear a gunshot.
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After bombing at a party that kills the SECNAV, DOD Inspector Parsons starts to believe in Gibbs and helps him find who is trying to kills the NCIS team. Tim is seeing a woman named Delilah who provides information about the bomb. |
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A Navy dress uniform hangs from a chair in an empty apartment. The room is completely wired to blow, with a trip switch on the door. The occupant's neighbor comes by to leave him a registered letter and the building manager offers to put it in his apartment. He opens the door, triggers the bomb and is blasted to smithereens. At NCIS, Tony chafes to see large Murray at Ziva's desk, although Murray points out it's not Ziva's anymore. He's scrubbing her hard drive. He finds an old photo of Tony, which Tony takes back. McGee comes in in a huff. He can't find his badge and ID. Tony suggests he wait to report the loss in case it turns up, even though waiting is a violation of the rules. Gibbs come in with the body of the week: the building manager. At the crime scene, the cop guarding the tape is actually checking IDs. Tony thinks McGee is screwed, but he loads up his arms, sticks a pad in his mouth and mumbles his way past. In the charred apartment, Palmer and Duckie are loading up the building manager when Palmer gets a call from Breena -- they're meeting with the adoption lawyer later in the day. Outside, the neighbor who came to drop off his mail is freaking out. She's not much help, her ears are still ringing. The occupant, Lt. JG Terence Keith, is on two week's leave visiting his mother in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. He wanted to fly, but washed out of the program. McGee calls Keith's mom -- he hasn't been there and isn't expecting him. There's no recent activity on his credit card or cell phone. The office stops as Ziva's phone rings. Tony answers it. It's her dentist. A loud woman comes in cheerfully calling Gibbs "probie." She's Vera, she has a meeting with Vance. She calls him Leroy and says they'll catch up later. She's Special Agent Vera Strickland, Mike Franks' last partner. Gibbs tells McGee to come with him to the Pentagon, but he lies and says Abby needs his help with something in the lab. He'd never get in the Pentagon without is ID.Tony insists he has nothing to do with the missing ID and asks if McGee left it on a booty call with DOD Delilah. Down in the morgue, Palmer leaves early for his appointment with the lawyer. In the lab, Abby is rocking out to the Sterile Puppets -- she and McGee went to the concert last night. She mentions the band has been trending on Twitter since the show. He wonders if someone lifted his things at the show. Abby lends him Ziva's scarf to help him feel better. Duckie brings up the building manager's clothes, which have something fused on them. Abby determined the explosive was 10-12 ounces of C4. Gibbs meets with Keith's CO, who says his heart wasn't really in the job. In MTAC, Vance and Vera are chatting when Vance notices McGee down on his hands and knees in the corner. He says he lost his car keys. Vera's retiring at the end of the month and will be at admin riding out her time. Abby IDs DNA on the bomb -- it belongs to Lt. Keith. They look over his phone records and find he called Lt. JG Dana Robins repeatedly over the past few days. Tony looked into his background and found Keith was a science nerd in high school and got picked on. Gibbs sets Vera up in an empty cubicle. Down in the lab, Abby reports the C4 was manufactured by a company in Des Moines, which is only distributed by Pyrotechnic Engineering in Anacostia. Tony finds Keith was an electronic engineering major, so he'd have the know how to make a bomb. Gibbs sends them to Anacostia and McGee has to confess he lost his credentials. Gibbs sends Vera with Tony, over her strong objections based on his history of car crashes and getting shot at. At Pyrotechnic Engineering, Vera takes over Tony's interview and learns that Keith was there looking to buy C4 but was turned away for not having the credentials. The manager referred him to a demolitions expert, Larry Purcell, when Keith said it was for blasting tree stumps. Gibbs meets with Lt. Robins at NCIS. She's deploying in the morning on the USS Benjamin Franklin. She flies F-18s. She and Keith were "just classmates." He was a good pilot, but the pressure got to him. He needed to be on anti-anxiety meds but couldn't and fly. She thinks he resented her moving on in training. She thought his call was odd, he wanted to see her, but she said no. Tony and Vera go see Purcell, who says Keith was there a couple weeks ago. He says he has to go check his records to see if he sold Keith C4. He goes inside and Tony hears a noise. He tackles Vera out of the way just before Larry comes crashing through his garage door in a truck. Tony shoots out one of its tires and Larry doesn't get far. Back at NCIS, Larry tells Tony he needed the money. Vera joins McGee in observation. She has a severe ankle sprain. Larry tells them he sold Keith 200 pounds of C4. Vance freaks out -- that's more C4 than was used to attack the USS Cole in Yemen. Abby reports that she got into Keith's hard drive and found he's been buying anti-anxiety meds online. The melted plastic on the dead guy's shirt was a private pilot's license registered to Lt. Keith -- the contents of the registered letter the manager was going to put in his apartment. Tony goes to visit the pilot who certified Keith. Keith rented a two seater for two days. In a barn somewhere, Lt. Keith works on building a giant bomb. Vance chats with FAA Director Stacy Bergin, who says the plane flew below radar so they don't know where it is. Gibbs orders everyone to stay on alert. The next morning, Vera gets off the phone with HR and rejoices that she doesn't have to come in to work anymore because of her injury. Vance comes to McGee with his ID -- it was turned in at RFK Stadium where McGee went to the concert. He's busted. Gibbs, Vance and Duckie conference with Bergin in MTAC. Duckie profiled Keith and says his going off his meds suddenly could make him unstable. They think he's seeking revenge but still don't know where. Down in the lab, Palmer is worried about his adoption chances given the macabre nature of his and Breena's work (she's a mortician). McGee comes down, bummed about his ID and inevitable investigation. Abby mentions the band they saw has gone viral with more than one million followers. She knows the drummer. McGee gets an idea. It takes several attempts to explain it to Gibbs, but they convince him to get Twitter followers to be on the lookout for Keith under #findthisplane. McGee tracks the tweets that follow and they get a sense of its flight path.Admiral Wayne Hargrove scrambles two jets to intercept, but they can't shoot it down over a populated area. From the tweets, they see he's flying a zigzag pattern. Gibbs realizes where Keith is going -- to the Benjamin Franklin in the bay. They find a way to access him via radio. Up in the plane, Keith is twitchy. The fighter planes catch up with him and the Benjamin Franklin goes on alert. Gibbs radios Keith to tell him the Franklin has locked onto him. "You don't understand, I need to do this," a shaky Keith says. Gibbs urges him to turn around so they can help him. The ship is ready to fire. Keith turns away from the Franklin and takes his hand off the switch -- his plane explodes. Later, the NCIS crew is ready to head home, but Agent Eugene Coyle is waiting for McGee about his credentials. Vance intercepts him -- McGee and the rest of the team have been invited to the White House for saving the Benjamin Franklin.
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A pillow store owner (yes), comes to work and notices a drop of blood leaking through a hole in his ceiling. He looks up through the hole and sees a dead body staring back at him. At NCIS, Palmer snoops on Tony's desk and finds a hand written letter from Tony to a woman named Jessica, apologizing for something. "What are you, in some kind of 12 step program for recovering misogynists?" McGee asks.Tony says the last few weeks have made him think. NCIS Special Agent Susan Grady, from the polygraph room, comes in with the body of the week. At the apartment, the victim's ID says Sgt. Patricia Moreno. Grady is applying for a full-time criminal investigator position. Tony thinks they can't let on how much Grady annoys them or act threatened, or Gibbs will like her. Duckie arrives with some Duckie facts on pillows, but gets shutdown at "buckwheat." The body is corroded with acid. McGee looks Sgt. Moreno up and finds she died in Afghanistan three and a half years ago. Back around the big screen at NCIS, the rundown: Moreno was killed by an IED and her body was sent back to Kansas. They think the victim stole her ID to steal her identity. The ID was stolen en route. Susan is talking to Moreno's family, but Tony tells Gibbs not to hold out much hope. He backpedals, and he and McGee both say they don't need a third person, but Gibbs asks if they're threatened. He barks at them to get on ID'ing the body. Down in the lab, Abby has ID'd the acid used on the body, but it's common. There's DNA on the necklace she's testing. The necklace stone is from Afghanistan, as is the inscription on the back. They look up an old job application and notice her emergency contact: Leyla Shakarji, Mike Franks's daughter-in-law. Gibbs and Tony pay a visit to Leyla at the park with her daughter. (The kid wants to know if Gibbs is coming over to play Twister again.) When Leyla looks at a picture of the woman, she says she doesn't know her. But they tell her the woman was murdered. Leyla says she only met her a few times, Mike asked Leyla to look after her. She never saw her again after he died. Two Years AgoMike drops in on Gibbs in his basement, with a Middle Eastern teenage girl named Elina, saying he needs to leave her with Gibbs for a few days. He says there's no one else he can trust, but Gibbs can't ask any questions. In the car on the ride home, Tony thinks Leyla was holding out on them. Abby calls to report the DNA on the necklace is from Farshad Sarabi, who has a history of domestic violence and works in a garage with acid. Gibbs remembers waiting for Mike with Eleni, who barely speaks English. He asks her where her family is. "Sold me to man," Eleni says. And old husband, she explains. Back in the morgue, Duckie speculates the victim died in an honor killing -- killed by her family for things like refusing to go along with an arranged marriage. The victim also has scars from a lifetime of beatings. Gibbs remembers seeing Mike drop Eleni off with a couple. Mike tells Gibbs about helping get a 12-year-old away from her rapist uncle in Afghanistan and becoming a sort of underground railroad for girls being moved by a women's shelter in Kabul. He asks Gibbs to put in a transport request for six refugees from Kabul to El Salvador, saying he'll do the rest. Back in interrogation, they have Farshad Sarabi in custody. Grady comes in to do the interrogation. When Tony and McGee are surprised, she also tells them the investigator job she wants is in San Diego and they relax. They found a list of Afghan women's names linked to dead service members in Farshad's apartment. Three names have been crossed off, including the victim's. Grady sits down with Farshad and accuses him of murder. When he denies it, Tony is ready to play bad cop, but so is Grady. She needles him about motive until he says the women brought shame upon their family and it was god's law that they be punished. Even if they stop him, someone else will get to them. In MTAC, Gibbs calls Lt. Thomas Gorman, the liaison to the women's rights group who says all the women on the list stayed at the same women's shelter in Kabul. Gibbs heads to Kabul with McGee. They meet Catherine Tavier, who runs the shelter. She shows them inside and she confirms the dead woman was Nadira. She's sure her family killed her, because they're the only ones who'd "care enough" to kill her. Catherine knew there was a conduit to the US, but now it's closed. The other women under assumed names in the US are being brought into protective custody, but they need to find out who leaked the names. Catherine tells Gibbs that Mike Franks spoke very highly of him. Gibbs remembers back to the travel request -- but tearing it up before he submitted it. In Kabul, McGee tries to talk to the women in the shelter to find out who might have leaked the names, but he's getting nowhere. There's one woman he hasn't spoken with yet. Tony calls on a video conference with the other women whose names were on the list. As he talks to McGee, one of the women with Tony sees one of the women in the shelter -- it's her mother, whom she hasn't seen in two years. Catherine explains that the mother was supposed to follow to the US, but it didn't happen after Mike Franks died. Tony called immigration because the women are in the country illegally, but Gibbs tells him to file requests for asylum. They're interrupted when someone throws a rock through the shelter window. Gibbs remembers Mike Franks coming to him, railing at him for not submitting the travel request. Gibbs says he's a federal agent and can't get involved with human smuggling. He cites his own Rule 10: Never get personally involved on a case and Rule 14: Bend the line, don't break it. Mike reminds him about getting Leyla and Amira into the country. Gibbs asks him where the line is, how many do they let in. Back in the shelter, McGee tells Gibbs about the girls' stories: one was sold into an arranged marriage at 13 and one was beaten by her father for kissing a boy.Thomas gets word that there's a bonfire planned at the shelter and says they've been recalled to base. He says they can't get involved due to the rules of engagement. Gibbs looks around at the scared, defenseless women and refuses to go. Tom says the girls will be fine, but it'll turn violent if they stay. Back at NCIS, Tony says good-bye to the refugees, then gets a call from McGee. He and Gibbs are both staying. He asks for satellite support. After night falls, they board up the shelter. Shots come through the windows. Tony calls to say a UN team is on the way. He checks the satellite and reports five attackers on foot. Gibbs remembers seeing news reports about six Afghan women killed in a similar attack, in which Catherine was the lone survivor. Mike harangues Gibbs, saying he could have gotten the girls out. Back in the shelter, they can't fire upon the attackers because they're outnumbered and the villagers would turn on them. And there's clearly no negotiating. Gibbs declares that the men are bullies, and resolves to stand up to them. Gibbs removes his weapons and goes outside to confront the men. One of them is holding a Molotov cocktail that he hasn't lit yet. One of the men approaches Gibbs and throws a punch. Gibbs knocks him down then stands there defiantly. The man with the bottle goes to light it, but McGee shoots the bottle. The men all aim their weapons at Gibbs, but he stares them down. When another man approaches with a knife, Gibbs quickly subdues him. Finally, their UN support arrives and essentially shooes the men away. "Boss, you saved the shelter," McGee says."For now, what about tomorrow?" Gibbs asks. Back home, Tony says the leak turned out to be one of the girls who was threatened. Gibbs returns home with Catherine -- and all the women from the shelter. "Mike would be so proud of you," Catherine says.
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A wounded man stumbles through the woods at night. He reaches the road and sees a stopped car. He tries to call for help, but can't manage the words and the couple inside is arguing and doesn't notice him. Before he reaches them, he's shot. They drive off. At the office, McGee is surprised to see Tony at work at 7 a.m. He got a lot done in the morning, because he hasn't slept. McGee has noticed Tony has been different the past few weeks (with Ziva gone). Tony admits it's been a few days since he slept. Before McGee can pester further, Gibbs arrives with the body of the week: A dead sailor outside Baltimore. At the park, walking to the crime scene, Tony crunches coffee beans and rejects McGee's offer of sleeping pills. The victim is first class Petty Officer Andrew Wells, he was a cryptotech who just returned from overseas. McGee says he was staying in a really nice hotel room and goes to check it out. Tony notices one of the lookie loos stands out from the crowd of joggers. The man runs when Tony calls after him, saying he knows him. Tony loses him.Gibbs notices Tony acting strangely. Tony picks up a wad of Choward's grape gum at his feet. Back in the office, Delilah Fielding is sitting at Ziva's desk and tells Tony she's joining the team. She's joking, the DOD sent her over because Andrew Wells had top level clearance. He was due to report to a base this morning. Tony has a pack of Choward's gum, which takes him back to 15 years ago when he was a beat cop in Baltimore, busting a kid named Anton Markin with gum and stolen cell phones. McGee reports Wells was staying at a $1,000 a night hotel and had $10,000 cash in his room. They sent his laptop to Abby to go over. In the lab, Abby doesn't have permission to log on, so she took it apart instead. She finds the insides don't match the case and it has spyware in it. Down in the morgue, Duckie knows Ziva is the reason Tony isn't sleeping. Tony thinks he's starting to hallucinate. Up in the office, McGee reports Wells' room was paid for by Amy Linden, a private defense contractor who used to work for Chinese tech companies. He called her repeatedly in the past few days. She could be Wells' handler and Gibbs wants them to pick her up. Gibbs goes with McGee when he sees how out of it Tony is. Abby brings Tony the DNA report on the gum -- it belongs to a fugitive wanted for stabbing a Russian mobster, the kid he busted all those years ago, Anton Markin. 15 years ago Anton cooperated with Tony on the name of the guy he got the cell phones from, but Tony knows he's part of a Russian crime syndicate so he takes him to his apartment to press him. He knows Anton was present at the murder of a truck driver recently. Anton admits it, but says he waited in the car and didn't know anyone was killed. Tony leans on him to cooperate, but Anton is worried about his sister. Tony goes to his old apartment, which is boarded up. He finds Anton inside. Anton holds a gun on him, remembering how the last time Tony convinced him to help, he lost his life and his sister. Anton blames him for what happened to him, but Tony says running was his choice. Anton hesitates shooting him and Tony takes the moment to swing at him. Anton runs and Tony follows, but he loses him. Tony calls McGee to look up the address of Anton's sister Marie Markin, but asks him not to tell Gibbs. Back at NCIS, Gibbs and McGee sit down with Amy Linden, who says she wanted Wells for his cryptology skills. She's a headhunter. The $10,000 was a signing bonus. In the lab, Delilah is looking over Wells' computer and Abby is digitally scanning the bullet fragments. Delilah finds a file she doesn't understand in Wells' computer and thinks it's something -- but it's his fantasy football team stats. They find he logged in from another computer. McGee calls Gibbs to report Marie works at Rankoff's Bakery in east Baltimore. Gibbs hears the conversation. Tony knows the bakery. Flash back to 15 years agoTony goes to the bakery looking for Anton, who's late for his shift. He meets Marie, who defends her brother, saying he only stole to get by. Tony is there because Anton missed a meeting with a detective. He promises to take care of Anton. In the present, Tony runs into Milo, the owner's son who he met at the bakery 15 years ago. Milo gives Tony Marie's address. When he gets there, he sees a broken window and blood inside. He hears a noise. But it's not Anton -- it's Gibbs. Wells served overseas with Marie's husband, who died a couple weeks ago in the line of duty. They think Wells' beating started in the house. Gibbs asks Tony about Anton. He killed one of the Russians he was informing on and skipped town, leaving Marie. But Tony doesn't think Anton killed Wells. "It was just one of those cases, everything fell apart," Tony says. He knows Anton is a killer, he stabbed that guy 15 times. Tony just wants to find out what went wrong. McGee shows Gibbs and Tony fingernail scratches in the garage. They find Marie's necklace. Gibbs looks around and find a hidden compartment in the garage with a stash of counterfeit laptops worth $300,000 on the street. Back in the lab, Abby and Delilah worked together to crack the laptops and learn they can be traced. The spyware is American, planted to track the people smuggling them. The computers belong to US Customs. Back upstairs, McGee explains Marie's husband was Sgt. Randy Hollister, whose partner was Jacob Spoke. Customs recently raided a warehouse owned by Spoke and arrested both men. They let Hollister go when they couldn't find the computers. 15 Years AgoTony comes home to find Anton hiding in his apartment. Anton thinks his boss knows he's snitching, but Tony tries to convince him to go through with it, then leaves for the station to put the operation together, leaving Anton in his apartment to wait. It was Tony's first time running an informant. At NCIS, Tony admits to Gibbs that he couldn't pull the trigger when Anton ran. "You followed your gut," Gibbs allows. Tony thinks he can't rely on his instincts anymore. "I was wrong to trust Anton, maybe I was wrong about a lot of people," Tony says."Are we still talking about the case?" Gibbs asks. Tony says it's weird how no one will say Ziva's name. Every time he looks at her desk he feels like he made the wrong decision, except it wasn't him that made it.Gibbs still trusts him. Gibbs, Tony and McGee go to Spoke's warehouse and find Anton with a gun on Spoke, demanding to know where his sister is. Tony convinces Anton to put down his gun, promising him they'll find Marie together. Gibbs talks to Spoke in interrogation. He says he has no idea where Marie is. He is too scared of the people running the computer operation to rat on them. Abby tells Gibbs the bullet that killed Wells was also used in a truck hijacking 15 years ago. Tony talks to Anton, telling him everything that's happening is because of him and the Russian gangster he killed 15 years ago.Anton still blames Tony for not being there that night like he promised. Anton tells Tony that that night 15 years ago, when Tony left to go back to the precinct to set up the operation, a guy came to Tony's apartment for him and took him to the shipyard. Anton says they were going to kill him and he grabbed the screwdriver in self defense.He ran because he knew how bad it looked. He came back for Marie's husband Randy's funeral and they're still after him. Tony goes to confront the person who told the gangsters that Anton was working with the police: Milo at the bakery. Milo goes for a gun, but Gibbs comes in the back and stops him. It's the same make and model that killed Wells, which means he has Marie. Milo says he convinced the gangsters to let Marie live, but then Anton became his debt. He sent guys to watch Marie when she told him Anton was coming to Randy's funeral. His guys held the guy who showed up -- but it was Wells, not Anton. Wells ran. They demand to know where Marie is. Later, Tony tells Anton that Marie is safe. Anton is in custody and being taken to Baltimore. Tony wants to help.He shows Marie in to hug her brother. At the end of the day, Tony stays to make sure Anton is processed smoothly. Then he kicks up his feet, leans back in his chair, and promptly falls asleep.
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The NCIS team works with Abby Borin from the Coast Guard to solve a death that occurred during an explosion on a ship. They must find the person who caused the explosion and murder. In preparation for Halloween, someone plays pranks at NCIS.
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We start with the body of the week, Sgt. Michael Dawson, dead in a robbery in a suit store. Gibbs' dad calls him. Tony talks to the owner, "Mr. Spiffy." A guy came in with a mask and a gun and demanded the money. He was going to turn it over, but Sgt. Dawson intervened and the robber shot him and ran off. "Spiffy" looks like he's going to lose his lunch. There have been three other armed robberies in the area this month. Gibbs answers the call from his dad -- but it's not his dad, it's a police officer. Gibbs hears his dad ranting in the background, asking them what law he broke. Back at the office, Tony is more concerned with what happened with Jackson than their case. He thinks Jackson got busted with a "lady of the night." Or he was trying to buy an exotic pet. McGee thinks Tony is in a mood. Tony dumps a box of files from Metro PD on McGee's desk and announces he's taking point. He tells McGee to go through them looking for a connection. Gibbs picks his dad up from the station, thanking the officer for handling it. Jackson's ornery, he hit a parked car. The officer says they need to take his license away. Jackson was on his way to pick up Gibbs to go visit an old war buddy in North Carolina after receiving a letter from the man saying he's dying. He has things he needs to say to him. Jackson remembers the war and radioing in that he's hit. Jackson reminds Gibbs of the name Walter Beck, the other pilot from a story Jackson told him about flying. Jackson insists that Gibbs meet Walter. "I need you to do this, please," Jackson says. In the lab, Abby tells Tony that Dawson was killed with a Glock 17.9 mm, similar to the gun used in the other robberies. Tony conferences McGee in with Gibbs. He says the other robberies seem similar. Gibbs tells McGee he has point. McGee starts giving Tony orders. On the road, Jackson remembers being in the air with a busted compass and no ammo, radioing for help. Gibbs thinks he knows the story. Tony talks with Michael's mother. She didn't know he was on leave. She assumes he was working on something, which is the only reason he wouldn't call. Gibbs and his dad stop at a diner, but Jackson is extremely anxious to get back on the road. Tony brings McGee surveillance footage from outside the suit shop that shows Dawson was being followed -- they now think the shooting was staged to look like the other robberies. Tony and McGee agree to be co-point on the case. Michael Dawson was on seven day leave from Anacostia, nothing odd in his bank records. He had a minor drug charge years ago, but that's it. He was on loan working for the Defense Clandestine Service, even though he was a mechanic. Jackson and Gibbs reach Walter's house in North Carolina. Gibbs learns that Walter didn't know they were coming. Jackson remember looking over midair and seeing Walter flying next to him and motioning for him to follow. "He saved me, Leroy. I was flying in the wrong direction. He turned me around, brought me home on his wing," Jackson said. He wants to wait for Walter. McGee and Tony meet with Dawson's DCS boss, Karen Fox, who says he was an incredible asset. They ask for his files. She references his past pain pill problem and the fact he seemed stressed lately. But Abby reports he had no drugs in his system. Abby figures out that Dawson speaks Jala, because that's what his mother spoke growing up in Nigeria. There's a Nigerian terrorist group using it as a code because so few speak it. Abby got the tip from McGee's girlfriend at the DoD. They think Karen Fox brought up Dawson's pill use to throw them off the trail and buy the DCS time to cover their tracks. They send word to Gibbs, who tells his dad it's time to go home. Jackson gets upset, saying again he wants Gibbs to meet Walter. Tony and McGee try to figure out where to go next, wondering how to get the DCS files. Gibbs shows up at the diner, telling them they have to go to DCS to read the files. McGee briefs Gibbs, saying not only could he not find record of Walter Beck in a hospital or morgue, there's no record of him serving with Jackson. In the morgue late at night, Duckie commiserates with Gibbs over the pain of watching a parent age. Gibbs is disturbed that his dad lies to him about things that matter. Duckie urges him not to give up. Gibbs tells his dad about finding no record of Walter Beck. Jackson isn't surprised -- Beck was German, the enemy. Walter wrote to Jackson and said he saved him that day to remind himself of who he was. He's dying and all he can think of is the people he killed over ideas that weren't his. Gibbs agrees to try to try to track him down. Tony and McGee report back after their night reading at DCS -- Dawson broke the Jala code so they don't think DCS had any reason to want him dead. Gibbs sees in Dawson's phone records that only two people called him at work, his mother and a guy named Aaron Connelly. He drives an SUV like the one they're looking for. They go to his apartment, where Connelly busts out of his closet and tackles McGee. After they subdue him, he insists he didn't want Dawson dead. Back in interrogation, they found that Connelly was on bath salts and PCP. Connelly insists he didn't know the weed was laced. They haven't been able to find the murder weapon. Connelly admits he drove by the suit shop, but he didn't kill him. Dawson was his sponsor in Narcotics Anonymous. Connelly says he showed up at Dawson's place high and it crushed Dawson. He took Connelly's stash and took off to confront Connelly's dealer -- the owner of the suit shop. Tony looks through the drawers of the suit shop and finds a hidden compartment full of heroin. Mr. Spiffy says he didn't kill Dawson, but then Tony finds the murder weapon. Down in the lab, Abby has determined what ambulance company transported Walter. They look in his letter to Jackson and see the name of a hospice. Gibbs takes Jackson to the hospice and gently suggests his dad move in with him."I appreciate the offer, I do. Maybe I'll take you up on it when I start getting old," Jackson says. Inside, Walter cries when he sees Jack and hugs him. Jack introduces Gibbs, saying what he did made his son possible and Gibbs helps people. Jackson says his son is the best person he knows.
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Marine Corps Base, Quantico.A female Marine is jogging down a muddy road when a red pick-up with a white stripe nails her from behind. The driver gets out to check and, upon seeing she's dead, flees the scene. On the scene, Tony is missing. He told McGee he'd get a ride; he still hasn't replaced his car. McGee gets a text from Deliliah, they're thinking about getting away for the weekend. The victim is a petty officer third class. She'd been training for a marathon and running every night. McGee is curious about the "friend" who finally drops Tony off. Duckie estimates TOD around 10pm. Back at the lab, from a headlight shard, Abby has ID'd the vehicle as a2005 Dodge Ram. Upstairs, McGee reports that make and model truck is registered to Marine Staff Sergeant Justin Dunne, but he never left the base last night. He's a helicopter mechanic with a past DUI. When Tony and McGee go check out the truck, they see it has serious front end damage. McGee is nervous things came together so quickly. They go to pick-up Dunne, who is washing a bloody knife in his apartment when they knock on the door. He sneaks out the window, but McGee catches him. Back in interrogation, Dunne tells Gibbs he hasn't driven the truck in a couple days and was asleep at home last night. He says he's been sober for 13 months. He won't explain why he tried to run. Down in the garage, Abby is hoping to match Dunne's boot to the foot print from the scene. The truck is definitely the murder weapon. The next day, Tony rides the elevator up with Carrie Clark, a former FBI agent now in private practice. She's representing Dunne. When Tony notices she doesn't have a wedding ring on, he calls Tobias Fornell to get the scoop. Dunne tells Carrie he wasn't driving his truck. She thinks he seems nervous. He doesn't want to tell her his alibi. After he quadruple checks that she can't repeat what he says, he tells her he was 35 miles away in Falls Church - stabbing a guy to death. Back upstairs, Carrie says her client has an alibi, but won't tell them what it is. She says she's going to check his alibi herself and get back to them. Down in the garage, Abby tells Gibbs the truck was wiped clean of fingerprints, even the spare key hidden in the wheel well. Carrie calls Gibbs to tell her that Dunne's alibi checks out, but she still can't tell him what it is. Gibbs notices she didn't call from her cell phone and McGee traces it to a pay phone in Falls Church. They think Carrie just dropped them a clue. Tony and McGee head to Falls Church and notice a police car in the area and meet Homicide Detective Paul Dockery, who tells them the cigar store owner was found dead upstairs last night. He tells them to tell Gibbs he says hi. In the garage, Abby reports she found a thumb print on the back of the rear view mirror -- it matched Private Daniel Cliff. In interrogation, Gibbs asks Dunne about Cliff. Out in the hall, Gibbs asks Carrie about the Falls Church murder and if her client could have done it. She only says he didn't do the hit and run. In the office, Tony satisfies McGee's curiosity and says he's been riding public transportation. When Gibbs gets there, McGee says there's no connection between Dunne and the dead cigar store owner. Dunne called a woman named Olivia Chandler at lot. Gibbs confronts Cliff Daniels in interrogation and he cracks quickly, saying he knew where the spare key was from back when Dunne was drinking and locked himself out. Gibbs doesn't want to charge Daniels just yet, because they'd have to let Dunne go. Gibbs goes to meet with Detective Dockery. The store owner was a bookie. Dockery is looking at a man named Kaiser who owed the bookie lots of money, but he has an alibi. Back in the office, McGee has a photo of Olivia Chandler, the woman Dunne called often. She's drop dead gorgeous but married to a much older man. She has a DUI on her record. McGee found Olivia Chandler's car on traffic cameras in the area where the bookie was killed. Gibbs tells McGee to try to link gambling or Kaiser to Dunne. He tells Tony to check out Olivia Chandler, making Tony's day. Tony talks to Olivia outside her house. He admires her Astin Martin. She met Dunne in an AA meeting. Tony notices her suitcase. She says she's going to Jamaica with some girlfriends. Back in the office, Tony looks over Dunne's credit card charges and sees multiple charges at a motel. Their 48 hours are up and they have to let Dunne go. Tony heads to the motel, where the desk clerk recognizes Dunne's picture. And even though he arrives separate from Olivia, he recognizes her photo, too. Duckie drops by Gibbs' basement to ask him what's bothering him. He says he's worried about Carrie Clark, and burning her if they mishandle the direction she pointed them in. She could be disbarred for steering them. Tony and McGee stake out Wendell Kaiser's apartment. They follow him to an AA meeting at a church. It turns out Tony knows it well. The Reverend knows him by name, from the meetings Tony attends. It's a men's support group, after the past year, he wanted to shake things up. The Reverend drove Tony to Quantico the other morning. Back at the office, Tony reviews the AA connection between Dunne, Olivia Chandler and Wendell Kaiser. Kaiser wanted the bookie dead, and they think Olivia wants her husband dead. They think it's going to happen when Dunnes ships out tomorrow and Olivia goes to Jamaica. Olivia drove Dunne and he killed the bookie. Detective Dockery talks to Kaiser after his meeting, mentioning Dunne and Olivia to him. He offers him a deal if he talks first. Gibbs watches as they take him in to custody. Olivia is about to leave for her trip when the police pull up to arrest her. They get Dunne off his ship before he ships out. Carrie Clark meets Gibbs at his diner. He plays dumb when she tells him about the arrest of her former client. They found the murder weapon at his house. She feels good about things, she did her job and now it's not her problem.She joins Gibbs for dinner.
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SecNav Porter leads a presentation in MTAC to four defense contractors United Equinox Electronics, Galaxy Missile Corporation, Dearborn Dynamics System and Beringer Marine about a new destroyer class. When she finishes, MTACs alarms go bonkers, shutting down at the sign of someone trying to hack into the system. The threat is coming from inside the room. At his desk, Tony tries to make small talk with Norma, another agent. He tells her hes apparently dating a tennis pro she left her number on a tennis ball on his pillow. Gibbs comes down with the crisis of the week not a body, but the breech in MTAC. Upstairs, Gibbs sweeps the defense contractors and the room and they find nothing. But Tonys scanning wand goes off as SecNav walks by. Tony pats her down and they find a flash drive with a pinhole microphone hidden in her pen. Shes the breech. In the elevator, SecNav tells Gibbs she has no idea where the pen came from and the last time she can remember using it is to sign a permission slip for her daughter yesterday. He believes her, explaining she gets the benefit of the doubt. She had classified briefings at three DOD facilities yesterday and the strategies she talked about could cause serious issues if they leak. McGee reports on Abbys findings on the pen. Based on the battery charge left, they think its been recording for 30 hours or so. Its not transmitting, the information has to be downloaded, which they have to assume has happened already. Tony gets off the phone with the NSA. They have a threat assessment two years ago on this exact situation. Gibbs and Tony go to talk to the analyst to talk to NSA Special Agent Todd Flynn Flynderling, who isnt thrilled to refer them to the person who wrote it. Flynn takes them to see NSA Agent Eleanor Ellie Bishop, who is reading and rocking out to loud music. Flynn sneaks up on her, causing her to cite Rule 1: When my earbuds are in, flash the desk light. She remembers the report, she wrote it after finishing Cocoa Pebbles and seeing the pen prize inside. She says she didnt give the report to anyone else. She plops back down and puts her earbuds in, explaining she not a field agent. But Gibbs wants her to come with them, they get a call of a second pen. Gibbs takes her to the morgue, where and accountant for United Equinox is on the slab. The DC ME found the second pen on him after the alert. He died two days ago of myocardial infarction. But the pen is missing, collected by someone posing as an FBI agent. Ellie gets an idea. Tony and McGee find Ellie sitting on the breakroom floor with her earbuds in, surrounded by papers. Tony notices a gold ring on her finger and wants to know if shes married. She says the person who stole the data has three options: release it in the name of freedom of information, which hasnt happened; sell it to an enemy country or sell it back to the US.Gibbs comes in to report someone just called to sell it. SecNav got a demand for $10 million in an email. They have an hour. Ellie plops herself down on top of Zivas desk and suggests they pay him and follow the money. Vance says SecNav approved making the payment. SecNav runs interference between Ward Davis with Beringer Marina and Marc Attencio, with United Equinox. They worry what the news leaking would do to their companys stock. SecNav takes Gibbs and Vance aside and tells them shes calling in more NSA help because she wants to make it right. Ellie drops in on Abby in the lab. She got a description of the fake FBI agent who picked up the second pen and ran it through facial recognition and IDd it as an American named Rudolph Stalin, with ties to Russia.Abby gets a call. At the scene of the money drop, Agent Flynn has been shot dead. The bad guy accessed the money through coffee shop wifi, so Flynn came alone to check it out. Ellie arrives in time to see Tony pull her report out of Flynns pocket. Back in the office, they confirm the $10 million is still there. Bishop realizes what someone could get out of luring and killing a federal agent: proof that their intel is legit so they can sell it to another, bigger, buyer. She blames herself for not realizing it and starts to get frantic. Gibbs suggests she take a break. Down in Abbys lab, she presents Gibbs with a date and time stamp of when the pen info was downloaded 7:30 last night, when she was at dinner. Abby found Stalin on a traffic cam sitting outside the restaurant. SecNav sits down with Bishop in the breakroom and Bishop tells her how hard it is not being able to talk to her family in Oklahoma about what she does.Tony comes to get her, they found Stalin. At the movie theater, Gibbs orders Bishop to stay in the car as he and Tony go inside to find Stalin. Later, she sees Stalin run out the back door. Worried hell get away, she blocks him with the car and knocks him out. Tony comes out and says Gibbs had the exit covered. Back watching interrogation, Bishop apologizes to Gibbs for hitting him. She remembered reading in his file that he was a high school track star. She remembers most of what she reads. She has an idea to pose as his lawyer, just being careful not to explicitly say she is. She and Gibbs join interrogation, she lays out her business card. Stalin says he didnt do it, but Edward Gracie did. When she leaves, she points out to Stalin that she gave him her real card. Down in the garage, theyre heading out to go to Gracies place, but Bishop gets called back to NSA HQ to debrief. Gibbs, McGee and Tony bust into the office building rented to Grace, but its empty. They find lots of spy pens along with flyers for a heart disease charity. He sends the pens with junk mail in the hopes people will keep the pen. They find a shipping receipt to Sarah Porter and many others. At NSA, Bishop gets an idea and looks something up. She likes what she finds. She drives to a mailbox store, she discovered Grace was an alias and had a weekly charge to the mailbox store. As shes about to walk in the door, Gibbs calls and angrily asks what shes doing there. Theyre staking out Edward Gracie hes inside. He walks out and sees Bishops NSA tag. He pulls his gun and tackles her as Gibbs and Tony drive up and get out of their cars. By the time they get there, Bishop is sitting on top of Gracie with his gun in his back. She has three older brothers.Gibbs is annoyed with her. Later, Bishop doesnt think their corporate pretty boy fits the crime. She thinks he wouldnt make the jump to treason without a good reason trying to impress his boss. Bishop looks up the staff lists from the corporations in MTAC this morning. Bugs have been sent to every person on the list, except one: Beringer Marina, the one paying Gracie. They wonder what Beringer has against her. Later, Gibbs meets with Ward Davis with Beringer. Gibbs pretends to be frustrated with Sarah Porter and Ward vents, saying he was on the short list for SecNav but he declined because he didnt have a military background. He thinks she should have done the same thing.Porter, Vance and Gibbs confront him with the pen. He says he was just trying to protect the military, but Porter says she doesnt have to be military to serve with honor. Bishop goes to see Gibbs late at night to apologize for not being a team player. He directs her to papers on Zivas desk Bishops NCIS application from years ago. He remembered her name and looked her up, which is why he brought her along today.He offers her a joint duty assignment.
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A Marine leaves someone a message saying they need to talk and he can explain everything. He returns to his apartment and hears an odd squeaky sound from down the hall. A clown steps out -- and shoots him in the chest. In the office, Ellie Bishop gets her stacks of paperwork to finalize her joint NSA-NCIS assignment from Rhoda, the legendary no-nonsense HR woman. Then after that she has to take another polygraph and survive Gibbs, who arrives with the body of the week: A dead marine in Potomac Heights. On the scene, the victim is Cpl. Ron Flegman, stationed at Quantico, worked in the motorpool. Ellie and Tony got a sketch of the clown from a neighbor's description. Gibbs orders them to pull all the street performer's weapon's permits. McGee finds the Marine's second cell phone including dozens of missed calls from the same number before he died. Tony recognizes it as the Adams House, where his dad always stays. Tony and Gibbs head to the hotel room and use the key to go in. They find Gibbs' ex-wife, Diane Sterling, on the bed. Then Tobias Fornell comes out of the bathroom wearing only a towel. Gibbs wants an explanation, especially since Diane is married. She says she's getting a divorce from Victor, and they were going to tell Gibbs but were keeping things quiet for their daughter Emily's sake. Gibbs tells Tobias about the missed calls. Diane confesses she was calling her boyfriend Eddie to break up with him (while Tobias was in the bathroom). She doesn't see what the big deal is with a little "innocent overlap."She's not surprised Eddie's phone was found on a dead guy, since he seemed shady and had no credit history. Back at NCIS, Tobias joins them for the rundown. Eddie Macklin works at a local climbing gym, but they found nothing on him prior to six months ago. At the gym, the owner Elijah tells them Eddie missed his personal climbing instruction appointment. He recognizes the client as the victim. He gives them the info on the car Eddie put on his employment application, because they found none registered to him. Later, Tobias drives Gibbs home. "What the hell am I doing, Gibbs? I feel like I've been swallowed by a python, cut my way out and crawled back inside again," Tobias says."That's about right," says Gibbs. Tobias says it's different this time and tries to get Gibbs' to weigh in. He finally settles on "If you're happy...." Tobias is interrupted by a call from his neighbor who watches Emily. She didn't come home, for the third time this week. He leaves to go search the mall. Gibbs goes inside his house, glad to be free of their drama, but a teen girl is waiting for him. "No way in hell am I living with either of them if they're back together," Emily says. The next day in the office, Emily asks Gibbs to let her stay with him another night, but he says her parents want her back.Ellie presents an overly wordy update on the case to Gibbs, and Emily tells her that he thinks she's doing a good job, but needs to relax. When Diane sees her daughter, she tells her she's in big trouble, but Emily starts arguing back about how terrible her parents are together. Finally, they think to ask her how she even knows. She put a keystroke logger on both their Facebook accounts. Abby comes up and tells Gibbs that Eddie exchange racy texts with Diane -- then she notices Diane standing there. Tobias races down to Abby's lab to read the texts, followed by Diane. Abby manages to remove them from her screen remotely, but Tobias wants to know how innocent the overlap was. The suspect sent texts to a burn phone about a security box. Gibbs takes her to the bank to ID Eddie from the security footage. When the bank manager leaves Gibbs and Diane alone, she unburdens herself. "Jethro, what am I doing? I feel like I drove my car into a ditch, dug myself out and then drove right back in again," she says. She says it's his fault for shooting Tobias in the rear and she had to nurse him back to health. She wants to know if they're making a mistake. The manager interrupts with the security footage and the box. Eddie's been there ten times in the last few weeks, but only stationary is left in the box. Diane sees Eddie on the footage, kissing a woman. Ellie drops in on the morgue to familiarize herself more with dead bodies. She looks at Flegman's body and is able to deduce everything before Duckie and Palmer can tell her: that the body wasn't moved and that a bruise on his leg indicates he was diabetic. She read the 600 page autopsy manual over the weekend. Tony interrupts with a cupcake to celebrate Ellie's first joint duty BOLO coming in. Eddie's car was found in airport longterm parking. She can't go, she has to take her polygraph. Tobias joins Abby in the garage, where she's going over Eddie's car with McGee. They found a clown nose in the truck and minute traces of blood in the car from four separate victims. Tobias giggles over the idea that Diane's ex was a serial killer. Back in the office, they're focusing on Eddie as the main suspect. Diane calls Gibbs for the fifth time to see if they've found Eddie yet. He says no and hangs up. Then Tobais calls and he goes through the same routine. Finally, when it rings again, he dunks his phone in his coffee. Ellie joins them, after finding her polygraph a breeze compared to NSA. Gibbs tells them to expand the BOLO on Eddie to train and bus stations."That's a bad idea," Ellie blurts out. Instead, she suggests they put his car back at long term parking and wait for him to come back, then follow him to see where he goes. Gibbs goes for it, to the shock of McGee and Tony. Gibbs goes home for some peace and quiet and a sandwich, but he hears noises coming from his basement. He goes to investigate and runs into Diane. She and Tobias had plans with Emily and she didn't show, she thought Emily might be there. Gibbs ushers her out, then hears a ringing from his closet. He finds Emily. Her Happy Cat Friend Alert watch is going off -- she set it to remind her to record a "Colombo" marathon. She asks him to help her break her parents up. She says all they do is fight, then says it's OK when it's just the three of them, then says she doesn't want to go through them breaking up again. Gibbs is confused about what she wants. So is she."You suck at this," she tells him, completing the Fornell family trifecta of advice sought and rejected. Gibbs gets a call from Tony: Eddie returned to his car. In the morning, Gibbs joins the team. Tony reports Eddie drove all night to lose a tail, then went into the storage locker where they are. Gibbs and Tony open the unit and find what Tony calls "Hannibal Lecter's little hobby center," with a mask and various tools. It's empty, then they see Eddie walking up to it. He takes off running and Tony follows. Eddie hits a dead end into a building, but then he uses his climbing skills to scale the wall and drop to the other side -- where he runs into Tobias' fist. In interrogation, Eddie says the storage unit isn't his. They found almost $100K in cash hidden in it. Eddie worries that "he" will be angry if he finds his money missing. Eddie gets up to leave, but Abby slides a file under the door. She connected one of the blood spatters to an unsolved quintuple homicide. Eddie insists he didn't kill anyone, the car is ten years old and is from a police impound.Then his demeanor shifts completely and he says his name isn't Eddie Macklin: It's special agent Edward McKenzie, with the Secret Service. He's in the middle of a highly classified six month operation. Later, in the conference room, Edward updates them on the money laundering case. They traced one of the sources to the Tower gym, where he went undercover. The cash came from a bank robbery gang, the owner Elijah Banner ran it with his girlfriend. Edward went with her to the bank to rent a safety deposit box to case the joint. Flegman drove the getaway car, but they haven't been able to tie Elijah to the robberies. He thinks Elijah's girlfriend was probably the one who killed Flegman, she works kid's parties as a clown. McKenzie wants to put the money back before Elijah notices he's gone, but before he can leave, Elijah calls him and asks to talk to Fornell. He knows McKenzie got picked up and he has Tobias's daughter, Emily. The team goes into overdrive. McGee reports there was a camera in the storage locker and Elijah must have seen them collect his money. Tony calls from the climbing gym, where they've found Elijah's girlfriend dead and surveillance photos of Fornell with Emily. Elijah calls and demands Ellie meet him alone with his cash. Gibbs leaves what to do up to Fornell, who asks Ellie, the analyst, if she thinks Elijah can be trusted. She says yes and goes to the meet. In a park, Elijah jogs up, takes his money and gives her a phone, saying he'll call with Emily's location. When Ellie checks in over comm, McGee suggests they can look up the phone to see where it's been, and maybe find out where he's going. Emily tries to look it up, but the phone doesn't work. She realizes something's wrong. Rather than reporting back, she takes her earpiece out and sits down to think in peace. She doesn't see any upside to killing Emily and she runs through all the possible scenarios, knowing he can't use his white van to get away because they're looking for it. She sees a blue van parked nearby and realizes he painted it. She runs over and opens the door and finds Emily unhurt inside. Ellie brings her back to NCIS, where she has a happy reunion with both parents. Gibbs tells Ellie good job, but warns her not to ever take her ear piece out again.They worry Elijah got away."Oh, he didn't get away. My last name is Fornell, after all," Emily says. Elijah pulls up to a gas station on his motorcycle and is quickly surrounded by Fornell and Gibbs. He asks how they caught him and Gibbs pulls Emily's Happy Cat Friend Alert watch out his backpack. It's Blue tooth enabled, McGee traced it. Elijah curses Emily and says he shouldn't have let her go. Tobias decks him. Gibbs comes home after a long day and crashes on his couch. Then he sees Diane and Tobias sitting at his kitchen table with a bottle of liquor. He tries to run, but they stop him. They want his blessing. He thinks about it.
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A Marine comes home for the holidays to see his wife and two kids. He goes to check on his young daughter Emma, who came home early from school with a fever. When he touches her, she's burning up. Her parents try to rouse her, but can't. At NCIS, Tony is looking forward to spending his Christmas in Jamaica. Ellie is going home to Oklahoma where her husband and brothers will argue about football. Abby presents them with her lab-baked holiday cookies. McGee gets off the phone and reports about Kevin and Audrey Daly and their daughter, Emma. She's in the ICU. Ellie recognizes the symptoms as McGee describes them, the same thing happened to her Marine friend's son, who's now on a respirator. Gibbs comes in and reports there are eight sick kids total. Abby's oldest friend Carol, who works at the Naval Medical Research Center, is with him. Abby worries it's bioterror. Carol and Abby will coordinate with the CDC while NCIS works the case. At home, Vance checks on his own kids before he takes them to school. Outside, Vance isn't happy when he sees an older black man named Lamar Addison on his lawn. Lamar assures him he's not looking for trouble, as he extends a hand, but Vance is angry and suggests he return to New York. He tells his kids the man is nobody. At the hospital, the total of sick kids has reached 14 and none of them is responding to treatment. Tony calls and says there are five more cases at Washington General in the last hour. At NCIS, Duckie is impressed by Palmer's epidemiology knowledge from classes he took after Tony got sick. He suggests Palmer help Abby and Carol pour through the data. In Vance's office, he tells Gibbs about Lamar Alexander: he's Jackie's father. He owns a chain of car dealerships in New York and walked out on Jackie and Michael when they were kids. Palmer's wife Breena stops by the lab to tell him the agency may have found them a birth mother to meet with. He's excited, but that's interrupted by Carol isolating the pathogen through a microscope. It doesn't look like anything they've ever seen. Back upstairs, the number of sick kids keeps rising. Gibbs calls everyone to the big screen for an update, but Ellie stays put to follow a lead -- not knowing they always meet around the screen in the second act. Ellie gets a name from a government watch list: Max Comey, a scientist fired for stealing mold samples. He lives on the same street as a school four of the kids attend. He also got in a fight with a Marine recruiter last week after he was rejected. Tony, Gibbs, and Ellie go to Max's apartment, but it's completely empty. Gibbs finds a biohazard bag in the trash. Duckie calls to report the illness caused a death of an elderly person. The victim is Lloyd Grunfeld, a Vietnam Vet who managed an on-base dry cleaner. There are now 28 sick children. Max's coworkers say he was egotistical and thought highly of himself. Down in the morgue, Duckie tells Gibbs that Lloyd died of aggressive pneumonia. Palmer starts to worry about having kids at all, given the fear over things going wrong. Abby and Carol work to ID the strain. Vance has Lamar brought into his office after his nanny called to say Lamar was at his house. Lamar wants to get to know his grandchildren, but Vance tells him Jackie always told them their grandfather was dead and he doesn't intend to say otherwise. Lamar offers to pay for the kids' college if he can meet them but Vance bristles at the idea he's trying to buy them. He throws Lamar out. Down in the lab, Abby and Carol have ID'd the strain as strep pneumonia and the hospitals are going to start administering the right drugs. Back upstairs, they're reviewing video of the kids to see where they might have picked up the germs. McGee gets word that Max Comey has been located. Gibbs wants Ellie to approach him since he fancies himself a ladies man. She flirts him up at the Christmas tree lot where he's working. She says she temped with him and flatters him. "They'll know they've made a mistake soon enough, I'll show them," Max says. The team comes out and searches Max's van. They find a biohazard cooler in it. Back in interrogation, Max says the lab was throwing away the mold spores. Max says he kept them to do his own experiments. Max says he was planning to make his girlfriend Bernadette sick so he could cure her to make her appreciate him. Later, Duckie thinks Max is completely delusional and Bernadette probably isn't even his girlfriend. Abby comes down with bad news, that the illness is not what they thought and the kids aren't responding to treatment. Gibbs calls Vance at home to update him. Vance's doorbell rings, it's Lamar. He has one thing to get off his chest. Vance hears him out. Lamar says he left Jackie's mom Millie because he felt too young to handle the responsibility. He later had his own family and raised three wonderful kids. Then he got a letter from Jackie last Christmas. Lamar says he's just worried about the kids' safety. Vance points out the card Lamar got is an unsigned Christmas card, and even their mailman got a more personal note. "You've got regrets, that's on you, but it's not up to me and my kids to make them go away," Vance says. In the lab, they're now confronted with lesions the kids are developing. Palmer insists on staying for the all-nighter, even with the meeting with the birth mother tomorrow. At the hospital, McGee gets word the number is up to 34 sick kids from eight different hospitals, from Portsmouth to Baltimore. They can't find any crossover. Gibbs notices the candy stripers, dressed as elves heading home. He gets an idea. Back at NCIS, the team has spent all night cross-checking volunteers at base holiday markets. All of the kids attended one. Vance drops in on the lab. The lesions are now turning purple, which prompts Palmer to say he's never having kids. Abby gives him a lecture on how good things like optimism, compassion, and faith are supposed to be infectious at the holidays. Vance takes note when she lists forgiveness. Gibbs conferences in to ask if the disease could be African. They've narrowed patient zero down to the Marine who played Santa at all the holiday parties -- who also took his suit in to be dry cleaned. He just returned from Congo. With Africa as a parameter, the lab geeks identify it as meningococcal A, which is treatable, and begin alerting the hospitals. At the hospital, the Dalys watch as Emma wakes up. Jimmy and Breena meet with the birth mother. Vance introduces his kids to Lamar, their grandfather. Ellie shares her mom's coffee cake with Gibbs before he leaves for the airport, saying it always makes her happy and everyone deserves to be happy at Christmas.
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A woman waits for a man in a park. When Danny comes, she's hugely relieved. But she's nervous and says they have to get out of there. They hear a noise in the air, possibly a helicopter, and as they turn to run a bullet cuts through the air and Danny falls down, dead. The woman runs to him, then runs away. In the elevator up to work, Deliliah is annoyed with McGee when he's telling her he needs more notice for something. Ellie joins them, she's excited to meet Delilah, who she describes as "a big deal in the analyst world, ever since Operation Pin Drop." But they can't tell McGee what it is. In the office, Tony is up to speed on McGee and Delilah's tiff because McGee butt-dailed him. Delilah is being awarded an impressive intelligence fellowship and wants him to go to a black tie gala tomorrow. McGee says he can't get time off, but Gibbs joins and is open to the idea. Then he gets the call with the body of the week: a dead Marine in Rock Creek Park. As they're leaving, Gibbs tells McGee not to use him as an excuse. In the park, the victim is Daniel Coyne. He was killed by a sniper bullet from an acute angle -- close and high up. Tony talks to a dog walker who is clearly crazy and says he saw a grey airship. Ellie has a sketch from other witnesses' descriptions. It's a Navy surveillance drone. Back in the office, Ellie reports that Coyne was a drone operator at Pax River. She hands Tony a primer she wrote on the merits of drone warfare. Tony thinks he knows everything there is to know about computerized technology from SkyNet in the Terminator movies. Down in the morgue, Duckie smells Shalimar perfume on the victim, meaning he was very near a woman with expensive taste. Duckie finds that Coyne had sex shortly before he died. At Pax River, Lt. Commander Stone tells Ellie and Tony that none of their drones are missing. He calls himself a hall monitor given the inexperience of the drone operators, but says Coyne was the exception and had a bright future. He was seeing Petty Officer First Class Patrice Gates, who thought they were getting married. But she's not the Shalimar-wearer. She didn't know Coyne was cheating and couldn't have modified the drone into a weapon. McGee says only someone who worked for the defense contractor Rhinehart Carrion would have the know-how, but they're under investigation by the DOD. Deliliah arrives to meet with Vance and Gibbs. In MTAC, Delilah describes a drone strike in Pakistan six months ago targeting Benham Parsa in retaliation for the murder of SecNav. Parsa escaped, but the mission was a success. Coyne was part of the kill chain, although his drone crashed. They think Parsa or his people may have recovered the crashed drone and smuggled it into the States. If so, they're not done attacking. The DOD investigator arrives: it's Gibbs' ex-girlfriend Hollis Mann. She tells them Rhinehart's systems were hacked a month ago. They have one suspect: Erin Pace, a computer engineer who's gone missing. Her photo looks like the woman in the park. Gibbs wants to take over the investigation but Hollis points out she was appointed by the Inspector General. She speed dials the Secretary of Defense, who tells them to work together. Downstairs, McGee and Tony use the big screen to brief Ellie on the many loves of Gibbs. Diane, "Satan's spawn" the first ex-wife; Stephanie, ex-wife three. Ex two is a mystery. Hollis was supposed to be ex number four, but one day she just moved to Hawaii. Gibbs comes down and requests info on Parsa. Hollis and Gibbs join Abby in the lab, where the DOD has sent over things from Erin Pace's apartment. She wears Shalimar. Abby swabbed the OJ for DNA and got a hit for Yusef Ryder, a violent ex-con who recently converted to Islam. Back upstairs, they report Yusef skipped parole two weeks ago and they have footage of him looting a gun store, including taking a high powered rifle. The van he was driving has been spotted a motel. The team heads there. In the car, Hollis tries to talk to Gibbs.She tells Gibbs she got married two years ago to a trauma surgeon. They notice Yusef's van rocking and close in. When they open the doors, they find Erin tied up in back. Gibbs assures her she's safe. "I'm not safe, none of us are," she says. Back at NCIS, Erin ID's Yusef as one of the three or more Pakistani men who kidnapped her. One spoke almost proper British English, and was polite. Something strikes Ellie and she starts researching. She refused to modify their drone until they showed her a feed of her husband asleep in bed in Mali, where he works for an NGO, then she did what they asked. She wasn't having an affair with Coyne, she just worked with him. They forced her to get Coyne to the park as a test run. She thinks someone important is next, revenge for an attack in Pakistan. She heard the word "acrobat." Hollis knows it as a secret service code name. Erin IDs a photo Ellie shows her: The polite man is Benham Parsa. Gibbs and Ellie brief Vance on the fact Parsa is in the country. The Secretary of Defense is meeting with several world leaders tomorrow, Hollis is already working to relocate it. Vance tells them to track the drone. McGee runs into Delilah in the hall. She bought him a tux. She understands that with Parsa in the country he can't come to the gala, but she doesn't understand why he was so resistant in the first place. Back in the office, Ellie is stumped over what Parsa is really up to, saying he only plans large scale attacks. They realize Parsa can't use military satellites to control the drone, so he must be nearby. McGee starts tracking. Later, Hollis joins Gibbs in his basement. She brought bourbon and wants to apologize. She tells him she could tell he wasn't ready to let go of his past so she made an executive decision and left. "You should have just asked," he says. She turns to leave, but he invites her to stay and pours her a drink. In the lab, Abby and McGee scan low frequency radio providers. Abby grills McGee on why he's being dumb about Delilah. He says he needs space, but she says he's just scared of getting hurt and Delilah is the best thing that's happened to him in a long time. They get a hit on the emergency broadcast tower, broadcasting a second carrier wave. McGee traces it to a storage building. On site, the team sees Yusef loading up his truck. Tony steps out and shouts NCIS. Yusef turns to fire at him, with Ellie right behind him. Then Yusef dives back into the warehouse. Ellie fires and the whole building explodes. Down in the NCIS garage, Ellie is kicking herself for blowing up the building and the drone. But, going through the wreckage, Abby finds evidence of a bomb. Yusef blew himself up. Abby has sorted things into bomb components, drone parts, and miscellaneous. She and Ellie start going through them. McGee comes down in his tux. With the immediate threat over, he's going to the gala. When he leaves, Abby finds parts that don't make sense. She and Ellie report to Gibbs, the parts are spare parts and they were supposed to explode. The drone is still out there. Down in the morgue, Duckie examines Yusef's body and finds tattoos for multiple prison gangs. Yusef went with whoever could protect him, not the type to martyr himself for a cause. So Yusef didn't kill himself, Benham Parsa detonated the bomb. Ellie and Tony go back at Erin. They've looked at her correspondence and finances. They know she hasn't spoken to or corresponded with her husband in the 11 months he's been gone. He left her saddled with debt from gambling. And they found $5 million in a living trust set up for her sister, who's in a care facility. Parsa didn't threaten her, he bribed her. They call her a terrorist and tell her she'll spend 50 years in jail. She changes her tune and starts bragging about the drones she helps build. Ellie briefs Gibbs. The drone is loaded with 100 pounds of C4, but Erin doesn't know the target. Ellie knows Parsa's targets are symbolic. They realize he's targeting the gala McGee is attending, where half the intelligence community is gathered. They call McGee at the gala. He steps outside to take the call and Delilah goes in. Tony tells him to get everyone out, but McGee looks up and it's too late. Gibbs gets a call with the source of the signal where they believe Parsa is. He and Hollis go to the building and find three men inside. They shoot two but the third runs. He makes it to the street. Gibbs fires but an SUV pulls up and the third man, Parsa, gets in and gets away. Back at NCIS, Tony reports there are four dead at the hotel and a few dozen wounded including Delilah, who's in surgery. Gibbs is focused on finding Parsa. He grabs all the intel and lays it out on the floor for Ellie to go over. "Get the son of a bitch," Gibbs says.
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Following the drone strike at the Conrad gala, McGee goes to see Delilah in the hospital. Six people were killed and 22 wounded. "It was Parsa, did you get him?" Delilah asks, before she crashes. Nurses come to wheel her into surgery, she's not breathing. Back at NCIS, Ellie is surrounded by their old intelligence, looking for something they missed. Tony, knowing she has her earbuds in, confesses he feels helpless to help McGee.Ellie takes out her buds out and explains why she's on her third bag of junk food. "Cheese puffs are the perfect food to support the linkage between new info and stuff already stored in the brain. Just like the cheese particles link the cheesy taste," she says. But she hasn't gotten anywhere yet. Gibbs arrives and suggests Parsa's surviving bodyguard knew nothing. Ellie thinks that makes sense given how Parsa operates. Suddenly, Gibbs orders them to grab their gear."I knew this day would come. Did you just hear about a body telepathically?" Tony asks. "It's not a body, it's a bullet," Gibbs says. Gibbs takes them back to the alley where he shot at Parsa as he was getting in the SUV. He sees a shell casing and follows the trajectory to a bullet hole in a door across the alley.Back in the lab, Abby has DNA from the bullet belonging to Bashir Malik, a U.S. citizen who grew up in Karachi. He's a suspect in an unsolved bombing at Camp Pendleton in 1990. If he was responsible, the two decades since is "a long time to get very angry and very organized," Abby says. Back at the hospital, McGee gets a visit from Dr. Rachel Cranston, Kate's sister. She's there as a crisis counselor. McGee says Delilah's parents are on the way from Wisconsin, but he told everyone else to focus on Parsa. Rachel offers to stay, but he declines. At the big screen, Ellie says Malik was arrested for assaulting a police officer in 2002 when the officer thought he was involved in a kidnapping. At the time of the 1990 bombing he was a delivery driver for Wellspring Fruit. He was brought in for questioning repeatedly but the investigation never got anywhere. Ellie suggests that because Malik got away with it back then he wouldn't have a reason to change his tactics, so anything from back then could help them now. Unfortunately, the NIS agent who investigated it is Duke Turner, and he's dead. Gibbs stays to go over the video of the interrogations while Tony and Ellie got to the NSA. NSA Senior Intelligence Analyst Sofia Martinez greets them. She says the recent Interpol summit on Parsa concluded that he would leave the country after the drone attack. Martinez delights Tony by thinking he looks like Robert Redford and getting all his movie references. Martinez is the "Smee" (Subject Matter Expert) on Benham Parsa. She's been monitoring Benham's sister's communications since 2007, she gets lots of calls from payphones in code. They ask for her reports and she says good-bye, calling Tony "DiNoknowsitall," which he loves.He asks Ellie if Martinez is single, but says she reminds him of someone annoying, he just can't think of who. (Himself.) Back at NCIS, Gibbs watches Duke's interview with Bashir, in which he insists he was in the area of the bombing only to deliver fruit. Gibbs asks Duckie to do a profile of Bashir. Duckie thinks it's odd that someone with Bashir's experience would bow to Parsa. Neither of them has heard an update on Delilah from McGee. Ellie announces that Parsa' SUV has been found. Tony, Ellie and Gibbs head to the scene, where the SUV is a smoldering heap following an explosion. Ellie recognizes Parsa's handwriting in the windshield message to them: "Try again." Later, Gibbs joins Abby in the garage. She found two bolts that don't come from the SUV. Abby thinks the explosion was covering something else. McGee joins them. He says Delilah is stable and in recovery. He's ready to work, but Gibbs is concerned and asks for his fitness for duty paperwork first. Gibbs sits down with the witness who saw Bashir at Camp Pendleton 23 years ago. He was out for an early morning run and saw the fruit truck parked at the side of the building, when deliveries are usually to the front. He saw Bashir Malik by the truck. He's kept tabs on info about him since then, and thinks he might have been responsible for the Keely Smith kidnapping that he assaulted the officer over in 2002. Rachel Cranston comes to NCIS to talk to McGee. She sees Ellie perched above her desk for a fresh perspective on the evidence. They talk briefly about the women who sat there before, without Rachel saying she's Kate sister. Rachel says she thinks both women would say there's no better place to grow than a desk next to McGee, Tony and Gibbs. Martinez calls Ellie with info. Ellie goes to MTAC to take her call securely. Martinez starts the call by saying Tony reminds her of someone annoying, but she can't think of who."Yourself?" Ellie suggests. Tony joins them and Martinez relays that they picked up a call that Parsa's sister received containing the numbers 180, 60 and 45. The sister said "it's not enough." McGee talks to Rachel, saying he's fine. She thinks he's giving the perfect responses, but she'd rather hear the real ones. "Is it just me you're shutting out, or is it everyone?" she asks.He says again that he just wants to get back to work. Gibbs watches more of Bashir's interview. He helplessly insists that he was there to deliver fruit and parked in the wrong place because he hadn't been there before. "Sir, I am not a terrorist, I just move things from one place to another," Bashir says. Gibbs takes that to Duckie. He thinks he delivered the fruit while someone else delivered the bomb. And he didn't kidnap Keely Smith, he was helping her flee her abusive husband. He's hired transport, which could mean Parsa is gone for good. In the morning, Tony volunteers to bring McGee a casserole, saying his men's health group encourages him to be sensitive during difficult times.Gibbs comes in for an update.McGee has found cash deposits in Bashir's account around the time of the 1990 bombing and Keely Smith's 2002 disappearance. Malik knows all about trucks, trains and cargo planes from his work at Wellspring as director of transportation. Gibbs tells McGee to take it easy. Down in the garage, Abby tells Gibbs that she found the SUV was modified. The gas tank was moved and split into the doors and there was a compartment big enough to hold a person. Back upstairs, Tony tries to fit in a 6 x 2 x 1.5' space and asks if Pakistan uses metric. Those numbers come out to about 180, 60 an 45 in centimeters. Benham's sister was worried the space was too small. They don't think there's a chance she'll turn on her brother, so they decide to use her loyalty instead. The CIA sends one of their embedded agents to Parsa's sister's house in Karachi to tell her something went wrong with his escape. Martinez conferences in in MTAC as they wait to see if the sister will react. Martinez says she's methodical, so they have to wait. Rachel stops Gibbs. She just spoke with Delilah's parents -- a piece of shrapnel moved and Delilah is paralyzed. McGee left the hospital before she ever woke up. In MTAC, Parsa's sister makes a call and McGee traces it as the CIA and Martinez at NSA listen in. The sister talks to Bashir Malik, who assures her he's doing his part. They trace Malik's phone to a DC address. When they're done, Gibbs tells McGee to talk to Cranston. Tony and Gibbs head to the address where they traced the call. They find Malik burning documents in an oil barrel. They take him into custody. Back at NCIS, Rachel tells Gibbs that McGee took off and she doesn't think he's fit to be at work. She suggest they let him process things on his own. In interrogation, Tony has confidence that Gibbs will get Malik to give up Parsa's location. Ellie is restless and goes to help Abby with the burned documents. "Sir, I am not a terrorist, I just move things from one place to another," Malik says. Gibbs shows him pictures of the victims as Bashir boasts about his skill but insists he's not a terrorist.Gibbs leaves, frustrated, and goes to think. McGee approaches him at his desk, telling him he wants to work. "You're more important than the job," Gibbs says. Gibbs knows McGee feels responsible and is just blaming himself so Gibbs tries to assure him they are responsible. He tells McGee to go back to the hospital and just talk to Delilah and tell her the truth. Gibbs goes back to Malik and makes a pitch to him to do the right thing. He says he put Parsa on a freight train in Baltimore hidden inside a car. He was supposed to move the body guard as well, but couldn't after they lost the SUV. The train was going to Miami and Parsa was supposed to get off along the way. He asks Gibbs to be sure to tell people he's not a terrorist. Back at the hospital, McGee joins Delilah. The team works in the garage to figure out where Parsa could be. McGee texts Gibbs. Gibbs goes to the hospital. McGee plans to come in tomorrow to tell the others what happens. He asks Gibbs to sit with him.
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NCIS continue their hunt on Parsa following the trail of breadcrumbs he had left during his dash to Pakistan. Bishop reveals she has been after him for a long time which takes Gibbs by surprise. She has to work hard to earn his trust again.
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Two best friends named Chris tag in an abandoned warehouse. One gets annoyed with the other and tosses his backpack, but the target sidesteps and it flies out a window to the ground below. There's a screech of tires. They look out and see a van crashed. Ellie practices her hand-to-hand combat skills in a gym for her certification. McGee and Tony come to take her to the body of the week. At the scene, they find guns and Marine cases. There's a mattress and latrine buckets inside, the driver lived in his van. There's blue paint splattered on the windshield. Tony finds the Chris's backpack with spray paint. The Marine crates don't contain guns -- they have armored vests, but they're missing their National Stock Numbers, meaning they never made it to the Marines. In the lab, Abby tested the vests and found the ceramic plates in them shatter on impact and can be lethal. Later, Tony gets off the phone with body armor manufacturers who are sending representatives. McGee gets off the phone with Delilah, who wants to come by and thank them for the takedown of Benham Parsa, but she's struggling with adjusting to being seen in the wheelchair she's now in."Just don't not avoid not making her feel self-conscious about it," Tony offers. Gibbs arrives and calls for a rundown on the driver. They tracked down a Chris from his homework at the scene. Tony talks to the Chrises. One of them wants to be arrested for scholarship purposes. "We're out of control teens, sir. We need the state to intervene," Chris says. Tony disappoints them by telling them they're not going to jail, but he offers to put them in a holding cell if they help ID the driver. He was a big guy in a fairgrounds gunshow t-shirt that was too small. Tony and Ellie head to the gun show. She's adjusting to always wearing her gun. She remembers the stress of the gun training exercise and Tony guesses that she shot the mother holding the baby."I thought it was a gun wrapped in a towel, like in 'Godfather Part 2,'" she defends. She begs him not to tell McGee or Gibbs. Fay Gussman, the gun show organizer finds them. She recognizes the picture of the van as belonging to someone who always tries to sell guns at her show without a permit. She leaves to find his name and address. Tony and Ellie see a woman named Karen selling care packages to send to troops overseas, including non-standard issue armored vests. She assures them hers are military grade. Tony checks, the vest isn't from the batch they're following. Fay brings the van driver's name and address. The team heads to his apartment and finds him shot dead on the floor. With Duckie and Palmer on the scene, Ellie is very helpful to Tony to get him to keep her secret. Palmer is acting odd but finally shares that their birth mother signed the adoption papers. In Abby's lab, she stares down Benson Honeycutt, a rep from a vest making company, Dearborn Dynamics Systems, trying to make him feel guilty. He assures her the faulty vests were set to be destroyed and never made it to the market or the military. Gibbs joins them and wants to know how they ended up with the vests. Benson doesn't have a good explanation. Abby finds evidence of another complaint with their vests that resulted in sergeant named Fred Linn becoming paralyzed. Gibbs and McGee go to the field where Linn said he'd meet them. They look up and see him floating down in a tandem parachute jump. Once he's on the ground and in is chair, he explains that he started a skydiving company. He's sanguine about becoming paralyzed, explaining that he was shot in the back four times in Kabul and doesn't blame his vest, even though it was a shard from the vest that hit his spine. When Gibbs asks, she says it was a gift from his mother but he's not going to ask where she got it. McGee asks him how long it took him to get used to being paralyzed. Linn explains you don't, you just move on. In the morgue, Palmer compares Linn's wounds to the ballistic dummy they used the faulty vest on and finds they're very similar.When Abby realizes she's chewing on a bubblegum cigar Palmer bought to celebrate the adoption her superstition kicks into high gear. Palmer knocks on a tongue depressor to reverse it. In the office, Mallory Linn, Fred's mom, arrives angry. She's alarmed to learn she sent her son faulty body armor and demands answers. She doesn't even remember sending it. She brought a dozen moms with her, all of whom sent body armor to their children. Delilah calls McGee -- she's in the office. McGee arrives to find Delilah and Tony naming all the disabled movie characters they can think of (Professor X, the old lady from 'Titantic'). McGee is appalled until Delilah says she started it. When the whole team is there, she thanks them for taking out the evil coward bastard Parsa."You know, that was actually the name on the death certificate," Tony says. Ellie announces a break in the case. She found that Mallory wrote a check to Karen with Home in Your Hands foundation -- the care package from the gun show -- which is why Mallory doesn't remember sending the vest. Three of the other waiting mothers did as well. They're going to have to coordinate with the other branches of the military. Gibbs suggests Delilah go up to MTAC to smooth things out since she's with the Department of Defense. In the elevator up, Delilah and McGee do an awkward dance with her chair, with McGee not knowing how or where to stand. Tony and Ellie stake out the charity woman Karen. They watch as a pick-up pulls up next to her and the driver hands something over then pulls away. Tony and Ellie stop the cars. Back in interrogation, they reveal that the bag Karen picked up were just tampons. She says the man is a dad who was sending his daughter her favorite brand; Karen was on her way to the post office. Gibbs shows her a photo of the shattered armor and they accuse her of selling faulty armor. She says she had no idea they were faulty. She admits she bought them from the dead van driver. She didn't ask questions because it saved money so she could send more. They want all her records. In MTAC, McGee and Delilah update Gibbs. A bulletin has been sent to all the services about the faulty vests but there's a recon unit outside of communication range and two of the members received the vests. In the office, McGee finds that Dearborn made money recycling their defective vests when it should have cost a lot. Benson Honeycutt signed the forms. In interrogation, Honeycutt insists there's nothing wrong with good business. When Gibbs comes in doing his Gibbs bluster, Honeycutt explains the recycling company was going to use the ceramic for other things which is why they made money. He says if the recycling company isn't destroying the vests it isn't his problem. McGee comes in with phone records showing multiple calls between Fay and Benson -- she owns the recycling plant. Benson confesses that Fay called him to say she wanted to tie up loose ends, but he didn't know that meant murder. He insists he didn't know the vests wouldn't be destroyed. Gibbs tells him to call Fay and set up a meeting. Fay waits outside the fairgrounds but when NCIS races up, she runs into her mobile home. Moments later, she opens fire on them with a semi-automatic weapon. They return fire and Ellie is hit. After a few more rounds, Fay opens the trailer door. She's wearing one of the faulty vests, and is hit. She's dead. Ellie has bruised ribs, but is OK. Back at the office, McGee asks permission to drive Delilah home. He asks Gibbs if he could make a stop and Gibbs tells him to take the time he needs. McGee takes Delilah to Linn's landing site. McGee checks his watch then see Linn come floating down from the sky and land on the landing pad next to his wheelchair.He thought Delilah might want to talk to Linn since they're going through some of the same things. She thanks him, but suggests as long as they're there, they should try sky diving, too.
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Tony goes to meet his dad at the Adams hotel and gets bumped by a navy commander, turns into a shooting and Tony drops the guy, questions pop up thereby revealing the guy's true identity. |
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In New Orleans, the body of a congressman and former NIS agent is found. NCIS agent Dwayne Cassius Pride shows up and knows the man, so he goes to see Gibbs who along with the man and Francks worked together. While Pride and Gibbs try to find out who wanted to kill the man, they learn that the FBI takes over the case and they are being secretive which doesn't make Pride happy. Later the FBI agent who took the case from them is killed. Gibbs suspects that it might have something to do with a case that he Pride and the man worked on years ago. So he and Bishop join Pride as he goes back to New Orleans to find out who the killer is.
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Gibbs and Pride try to find the person who is emulating the serial killer they pursued and arrested 20 years ago in New Orleans. But back in Washington Vance thinks the man they arrested may have been framed. And the one who could have framed him was the agent who was killed. While Pride says that can't be, Gibbs isn't so sure. So the actual killer might still be out there and the one they're looking for.
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After returning to her job at the Department of Defense, McGee's girlfriend Delilah finds a break in a controversial case, prompting her to turn to the NCIS team for help. Meanwhile, McGee talks to DiNozzo about whether he should ask Delilah to move in. Margo Harshman guest stars.
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After a Navy officer is found dead on a rural road, the NCIS team must ascertain if the murder was the result of a bar fight or because he knew too much about an attack on a fellow female officer. Meanwhile, DiNozzo and McGee start a juice cleanse to purge their bodies of impurities.
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The NCIS team investigates whether a fire on a U.S. Navy ship that served as a secret detention site for indicted terrorists was accidental or an intentional diversion for an escape. Meanwhile, Gibbs travels to his childhood home following news of his father's passing, on the 11th season finale of NCIS. Episode honors the memory of recurring guest star Ralph Waite.
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Gibbs and McGee are shot down in a Naval helicopter over remote parts of Russia while on a mission to escort an NCIS computer geek safely home. Meanwhile, the gang at home anxiously work to help bring them all home safely. |
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A Navy Commander is murdered near the White House, it is learned that he was on his way to talk to the President. Gibbs and his team must determine if it is because of his relationship with the President or because of his marital problems. |
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Flashbacks into his past help tell the tale for Dr. Mallard as he and Bishop travel to England in search of answers to find out why an Englishman murdered in the United States would have a list of deceased Navy men on his person. |
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After a scientist is decapitated by a strangulation device in a park, Gibbs and his team search for the woman who was her former research partner in Russia in order to learn who is behind her murder. They learn it may be a familiar foe. |
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While the NCIS team is on a training exercise with CGIS Special Agent Abigail Borin, Gibbs spots a man overboard. It leads him to board another ship called The San Dominick, and he soon discovers that it has been taken over by pirates. |
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The wife of a Navy Seal is murdered, the NCIS team discovers she has a background in criminal forensics and recently visited a serial killer in prison seeking his help with another sociopath. Gibbs and company must figure out it is. |
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While investigating the death of a retired Marine Master Sergeant, Gibbs and the NCIS team discover there is a possibility that his death may be connected to another Marine who was MIA from the Vietnam War.
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At the scene of a car crash, Anna Dillon, a former Navy hospital corpsman gives aid to the injured; one (a Navy petty officer) dies, and two survive; Gibbs and company investigate; Dillon thinks that she saw an SUV leaving the site; local authorities arrest her for practicing medicine without a license. Abby confirms a transfer of paint; the gang soon find the owner of a recently disappeared pickup truck. They later find a connection between the dead sailor and the owner of the truck, then find the truck (with a topper) with the suspect, dead apparently of suicide; however, Ducky says that the supposed suicide was a staged one to disguise a prior injury; the team find an oversize wrench, and Abby identifies the killer. Meanwhile Gibbs finds a volunteer attorney for Dillon, whom the parents of the victims vigorously support; the lawyer makes a good deal for Dillon, and Gibbs encourages her to obtain civilian training so that she can help more people.
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On the eve of Thanksgiving, DiNozzo and Bishop experience a weather delay at the D.C airport when Gibbs informs them of an elevated terror threat specific to area airports. An impostor posing as an air marshal leads them to the real threat.
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Tis the season to be hacking. In a Christmas letter to his father, McGee describes in detail a case in which he, Gibbs and the rest of the NCIS team investigate the hackers who are responsible for the Internet going down in the D.C. area. |
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The NCIS team investigate a series of crime scenes that appear to be copycats of previous cases. Meanwhile, two of Gibbs' ex-wives show up at a crime scene to discuss something important with him. |
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Gibbs and the rest of the NCIS team, along with FBI agent Fornell are on the hunt for an American born terrorist who was detected in Syria but is now back in the D.C area.
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When a openly-gay Navy Lieutenant who was about to be awarded the Medal of Honor is murdered, Gibbs and the team investigate. Meanwhile, Breena goes into labor. |
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DiNozzo returns to the military academy he attended as a teenager after a murdered Marine and alumni of the school is found clutching the photo of a current student. Also, Bishop and her husband invite Gibbs and the team out for a special dinner.
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Gibbs and the NCIS team continue to track down the Russian terrorist Sergei after two young Marines are killed in a bombing. Agent Fornell struggles to cope with the recent shooting death of his ex-wife at the hands of Sergei.
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A covert identity created for one of Gibbs' undercover cases 20 years ago resurfaces after a murder victim is found living under the alias. |
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After a Vice Admirals aide is murdered, Gibbs and the NCIS team theorize that it was because of a valuable painting in her office. DiNozzo's father is more than happy to help with the investigation by sharing his knowledge of the artwork. |
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After the body of a thief is found in a Marine's house, NCIS discovers the calling card of a terror group Delilah and the Department of Defense have been tracking. Margo Harshman guest stars. |
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A petty officer's murder provides clues to a 40 year unsolved airport bombing which Gibbs and DiNozzo have been reexamining recently. |
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Gibbs and Bishop travel to Afghanistan when a murder investigation is linked to a terror group holding a Marine hostage. Meanwhile, Tony is annoyed when McGee steals his gig as the face of the NCIS recruitment brochures. |
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Special Agent Ned Dorneget from NCIS cyber operations assists the team when a Navy ensign who worked in the Office of Naval Intelligence is murdered...
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NCIS feverishly investigates a global terrorist group that is recruiting teens via the Internet, following a deadly bombing overseas that results in an emotional and surprising loss for the team. |
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Gibbs fights for his life after being shot by Luke. Meanwhile, Agent Dinozzo and Johanna travel to Egypt to take down The Calling |
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Gibbs asks the team to work on a case with a DEA Agent to bring down a drug dealer who is connected to the Gibbs and the agent. |
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Hours after calling Gibbs about a possible case, a Marine is found dead in Quantico; McGee and Bishop pose as a married couple. |
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Vance partners with Gibbs and returns to field duty when a murder case is connected to a former NCIS agent he put in jail for stealing evidence. |
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When a petty officer is murdered, the crime matches a local serial killer's method of operation; Delilah and McGee prepare to move in together. |
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NCIS investigates the death of a retired Navy officer who's son was convicted of a murder 16 years before. A flawed forensic test from that time can prove whether the son was the real murderer or innocent of the crime.
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A Petty Officer, accused of killing an ex-girlfriend, is set free on mistrial. Professing to be innocent he asks NCIS to investigate and if necessary court martial him. Bishop and her husband have marital problems.
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The Secretary of Defense turns to NCIS to help a sailor dying from leukemia locate a bone marrow transplant after two of his siblings are killed in the line of duty. Meanwhile, Bishop returns home to Oklahoma for Thanksgiving after learning of Jake's cheating. Lindsay Wagner guests as Bishop's mom.
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Gibbs and his team work with Pride and the New Orleans team to find Abby's brother and figure out why the passengers and crew of a private plane he catered were poisoned. |
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The investigation of a seaman's murder uncovers the resurface of a human-trafficking ring, while McGee hopes to spend the night with a colleague during a power outage.
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The team investigates the murder of a deep-sea diver outside a high-tech decompression chamber where the body and suspects have to stay for four days. |
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Dr. Cyril Taft feels the rush of an NCIS case when he's assigned to operate on Gibbs' suspect and discovers key evidence. |
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Gibbs tries to connect with a wounded Special Ops sniper when an American couple is attack in the same area in Iraq where the sniper's team was ambushed. |
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The wife and mistress of a Navy Public Affairs officer accuse each other of murdering him, so the team must figure out who's lying. |
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A family owned mortuary ordered a bunch of caskets from an overseas company. When they go to unload the shipment, they find that one of the caskets already has a dead body. There are ties to a prison break of someone NCIS helped put away. |
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Gibbs and the team investigate a military home invasion thwarted by a 14-year-old, while Vance and Fornell head to London to continue pursuing the escaped British spy.
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The team continues the international manhunt for an escaped British spy while a colleague fights for their life in the ICU. |
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The NCIS, FBI and MI6 teams continue the international manhunt for an escaped British spy who's targeting current and former agents. Anthony DiNozzo bids farewell to NCIS. |
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The team investigates a car explosion with a connection to an agent who went missing six months earlier; Gibbs asks NCIS Special Agent Alex Quinn to shadow his team. |
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NCIS uncovers a bomb plot and a long-running theft ring while investigating a death at a Quantico reunion. Meanwhile, Torres and Quinn adjust to life on Gibbs' team, including new seating arrangements in the squad room. |
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A marine sergeant is killed when she falls from a building, but her doctor, Grace Confalone, risks breaking patient confidentiality and urges Gibbs to investigate the death as a murder. |
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Gibbs, Quinn and Palmer head out to sea when the body of a navy lieutenant is found on a destroyer during a tiger cruise. |
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Gibbs sends Bishop and Quinn to Philadelphia to work with MI-6 Officer Clayton Reeves on the murder case of a British operative. Meanwhile, Quinn deals with the NCIS case that caused her to leave the field. |
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Torres breaks protocol when he identifies a suspect that is wanted by ICE; Abby, McGee, and Bishop try to woo Anthony DiNozzo, Sr. Into subletting his son's apartment. |
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Bishop questions her previous work at the NSA when she's sent to Gitmo to collect evidence for a Navy chaplain murder case. In the meantime, her brothers visit for Thanksgiving and want to know from her co-workers who she's dating. |
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Ducky looks back on a choice he made 37 years ago when evidence in the murder of a Navy captain is linked to his dead mother. |
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The team searches for new leads when an undercover mission to apprehend a businessman who's committing acts of terrorism to manipulate the stock market is compromised. |
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When Gibbs spots the brother of a Most Wanted suspect, he assumes an old alias and goes undercover with their anti-government militia. |
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The team partner with "The Sherlocks" - one of whom is Anthony DiNozzo, Sr. - to investigate the murder of a petty officer outside D.C. |
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Bishop is more determined to avenge her boyfriend's murder when the team finds a new lead in the Chen case. In the meantime, Torres teaches his fellow agents the art of pick-pocketing. |
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McGee's apartment is torn apart by a robber looking for a valuable item hidden by the previous tenant, a convicted criminal. |
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The stress of McGee and Delilah's upcoming wedding lands Delilah in the hospital; the NCIS team investigates the mysterious death of a healthy, young petty officer aboard a Navy destroyer. |
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Gibbs, McGee and Torres travel to a remote area of Paraguay, controlled by a violent group of rebels, in an attempt to locate a missing Navy Seal who disappeared during an unsanctioned trip. |
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The NCIS team, including recently transferred Special Agent Jacqueline Sloane, investigating the kidnapping of a sailor during a storm that shuts down Washington DC. |
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After Reeves sees his friend get kidnapped, the NCIS team discovers the primary suspect disappeared two days ago with confidential military information. Also, a photo from McGee's teenage years becomes a popular meme. |
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Early one morning while getting in an early round of golf two golfers discover the body of a Petty Officer under a mower. McGee learns the Petty Officer is a ham radio operator and spends hours on the ham radio trying to locate a key witness.
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An NCIS person of interest in a bribery and fraud case is found murdered after a runner is led to his body by a strange voice. Also, McGee and Delilah disagree on whether to find out the baby's sex.
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The team's Thanksgiving plans are put on hold while they track elusive international arms dealer Andre Yorka in D.C. who recently murdered an MI6 officer who was also Sloane's close friend. Also, Abby races Delilah to the hospital when labor for the twins starts three weeks early. When McGee gets to the hospital, he is intercepted in the lobby by retired Parks Police Officer Morgan Cade, who directs McGee to where Delilah is being attended to by an emergency obstetrician.
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Torres and Sloane run protection detail for a U.S. senator in Afghanistan during the holidays and must return to the States when they learn the senator's son is in the ICU.
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A Navy Lieutenant JAG lawyer that appeared to have a happy life is found dead by her parents in an apparent suicide. Capt. Bud Roberts helps in the investigation.
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After McGee and Torres visit the home of a high schooler who witnessed a hit and run, her parents flee with their daughter, leaving NCIS in the lurch.
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When the body of a missing Navy commander is found, Gibbs and his team are ordered to work with former FBI agent Tobias Fornell, the private investigator who was hired to find him.
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NCIS makes a deal with Paul Triff to give him a 48-hour furlough at his former residence, now McGee's home, in exchange for information to convict Gabriel Hicks.
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The team works to clear the name of a retired Marine sergeant when cyanide is found in one of the packages he sends to active-duty Marines.
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Gibbs and Ducky see an antique war stick on television that could be the missing murder weapon to a 16-year-old cold case.
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Gibbs is granted protective custody of a 10-year-old orphaned refugee when a case reveals she is the target of a violent gang.
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NCIS searches for a petty officer suspected of assault who escapes when the sheriff transporting him crashes into a lake. Also, Torres works closely with Annie Barth, a key blind witness who heard vital evidence needed to solve the case.
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A daughter begs Gibbs to investigate her mother's murder because she believes the police convicted the wrong man. Abby receives a hard to get reservation at a new restaurant that is an cold like an igloo.
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When evidence reveals an NCIS team member is a hitman's latest target, the team must search through old case files to determine who is seeking vengeance.
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While Gibbs attends the memorial service for a friend who was lost at sea, he discovers that the deceased has been hiding in a fallout shelter after his boat was attacked and he swam to shore.
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The Season 15 finale: Sloane is adamant that a man who held her hostage and tortured her years ago in Afghanistan, and was believed to have been killed following her rescue, is alive and in D.C., leading Vance and Gibbs to fear she is willing to risk everything to destroy this man.
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When a navy lieutenant is found murdered in his hot tub, the team interviews his peculiar neighbors. In the meantime, Torres must face the consequences of a volatile night out with Palmer.
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While Gibbs is on a quiet vacation in the woods, he is interrupted by his friends, Fornell and Brooks, and an case near his cabin.
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The team works to exonerate a Marine serving a life sentence for murder after the discovery of a 50-year-old tape recording of the victim.
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At a Halloween crime scene, Torres recognizes the NCIS victim as a former friend from federal law enforcement training, and Jimmy thinks his lab may be haunted!
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The theft of a street artist's mural leads the team to investigate a conspiracy regarding a Navy contractor and the safety of ocean mammals.
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McGee and Bishop travel to Afghanistan after a murder case in the states is linked to a string of soldiers killed by friendly fire overseas.
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After the lead suspect of an unsolved high-profile burglary case is released from prison, the team resumes their investigation with an undercover stakeout.
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The team's holiday plans are put on hold after the murder investigation of a Navy veteran includes the discovery of a newborn baby with no identification.
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The Secretary of Defense shuts down Gibbs' murder investigation and demands that McGee and Torres be arrested for their actions in the case.
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An old family friend beseeches Gibbs to join him on a road trip to search for a missing military I.D. bracelet.
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After a malnourished and confused 9-year-old is found hiding in a storage unit, the team reopens an old missing persons case that Special Agent Ziva David had a personal interest in.
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McGee reluctantly visits his former high school after the unique computer password he used as a teenager is linked to the murder of a department of defense contractor.
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Jimmy is torn between family and work after his father-in-law asks him to tamper with evidence from the team's current murder investigation.
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Vance is notified by the Pentagon that the nuclear submarine Gibbs and Bishop are aboard to conduct a murder investigation has gone radio silent.
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After Torres wakes up on a dilapidated fishing boat covered in blood, the team helps him piece together the last 12 hours.
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The team investigates the murder of a Marine Major believed to have been killed in the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon after human remains are discovered at a construction site.
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Kasie solves a 30-year-old murder case, but a loophole in the legal system may set the suspect free; McGee visits an elite technology company that is offering him a highly paid position.
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After the team finds a secret government bank account that's funding a nationwide network of vigilante justice, they must determine who is acting as judge and jury.
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The team investigates the murder of Marine Gunnery Sergeant Richard Wilson who was hailed as a war hero for his efforts overseas; Gibbs turns to Dr. Confalone for advice after uncharacteristically abandoning the team at a crime scene.
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Fornell pleads with Gibbs to do whatever is necessary to take down drug dealers in the area after his daughter is hospitalized from a drug overdose; Gibbs is haunted by aspects of the case.
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Ziva surprises Gibbs with a cryptic warning, prompting him to question why she remained underground for years while being presumed dead, and what led to her return.
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With their lives in danger, Gibbs and Ziva's rogue investigation takes an unexpected turn when a possible terrorist plot is revealed.
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After a body is found hidden under an 18-wheeler delivering to the Navy yard, the team tracks the vehicle's previous locations to pinpoint the crime scene and suspect; Sloane encourages the team to talk about Ziva's recent reappearance.
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The team links a bizarre crime scene at Arlington National Cemetery to a string of attacks on homeless veterans; Vance orders McGee, Bishop and Torres to complete hours of evidence garage cleanup duty for withholding information.
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The team investigates a Marine Corporal after evidence suggests she murdered her neighbor while being treated for insomnia by a hypnotherapist.
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When a Petty Officer's son is found murdered at his welcome home from prison party, evidence suggests that Kasie's lifelong best friend, Dante Brown, is the suspect.
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While investigating a Marine's murder, the NCIS team uncovers a network of live-streaming hidden spy cameras in the rooms of a Virginia motel.
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The NCIS team investigates the murder of a musician in the Navy's most elite band, which performs at diplomatic events around the world.
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The team investigates a petty officer's murder that was live-streamed on a popular gaming app. Also, Gibbs is asked to look after his 11-year-old neighbor, Phineas, when his mom must leave on a last-minute trip.
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Gibbs and the team help Ziva with the "one thing" she said she'd take care of before returning to her family.
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Gibbs must face the consequences of helping Ziva with "the one thing" she said she'd take care of before returning to her family.
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The NCIS team investigates an F-18 crash and subsequent disappearance of the pilot; McGee reluctantly discusses a very personal decision with his teammates
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After a body is found at an unmanned aerial vehicle testing site, the NCIS team must determine if the death was murder or an accident. Also, Palmer carefully interviews medical examiner assistant candidates.
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The lead suspect in an NCIS murder investigation is a woman Gibbs' friend, Phillip Brooks (Don Lake), met on a dating site. Also, Sloane has a secret admirer on Valentine's Day.
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While investigating the suicide of a retired Navy officer who left a rare, valuable - and possibly stolen - coin to the National Museum of the Navy, the team imagines themselves in his life story in order to piece together how the coin ended up in his possession.
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The NCIS team investigates the death of a Navy Petty Officer murdered the same way as his parents a decade ago. They stumble across a storage container filled with dollhouses that display recreations of murder scenes. Also, the team agrees to clean out their living spaces, but some have a harder time saying goodbye to their possessions than others.
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The team searches for answers when the body of a well-regarded Navy technician in the Reserves is found floating in a lake where a popular community event is being held. Also, Sloane is caught off-guard when her daughter, Faith (Kate Hamilton), makes an unexpected request.
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While investigating an off-base burglary at an Admiral's residence, NCIS becomes involved in a case of an older man that claims to be a Pearl Harbor survivor. He wishes to have his remains buried on the USS Arizona.
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Gibbs and Fornell attempt to track down the leader of a drug ring who supplied drugs to Fornell's daughter; the team deals with the case of a missing cadaver from the NCIS autopsy room.
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Flashbacks reveal the murder case that first introduced young Gibbs (Sean Harmon) to NCIS and his introduction to young, new-to-America Ducky (Adam Campbell).
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The discovery of two dead bodies leads the team into the world of modern day treasure hunting as Gibbs and Fornell get deeper into their search for the drug kingpin.
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McGee and his wife Delilah's Bahamian vacation turns into a high-stakes mission when a case NCIS is tracking of a dead escape room manager has ties to the island. Also, Gibbs fears the worst when his search for Fornell leads to blood.
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Gibbs and Fornell's crusade to find the head of the drug ring responsible for Fornell's daughter Emily's overdose comes to a climax. Also, Gibbs and Vance finally let the team in on a case that has dangerous implications.
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Following a tip about smuggled weapons, Bishop and Torres engage in a shootout in a former sheriff's residence that's now a historical site, only to find themselves locked in abandoned jail cells there.
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NCIS investigates the murder of a Navy officer who was killed while driving home a recently released inmate. Also, Gibbs helps Palmer deal with personal trauma.
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