Four episodes into its fourth season, and two episodes since the full-time return of Team Leader Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon), NCIS writers ratchet the plot complexity up a notch. A man is stopped for a routine traffic violation and officers discover a recently discharged pistol. While the driver is being apprehended, a second car crashes into the police cruiser. The driver, Navy Petty Officer Marty Allen (Albie Selznick), is expiring from an abdominal gunshot wound as the police office opens his car door, where a bag of quarters spills out.
The apprehended driver, carrying a false ID, is identified as Russian arms dealer Nikolai Puchenko (Ravil Isyanov) — he had “an accent as thick as Polish Sausage” — who turns out to be wanted by the Department of Homeland Security. Once Puchenko is identified, Gibbs does a bit of background research, discovering a connection between the Russian, a U.S. covert operation called Sunburst (for which the case file has been removed from government databases), and Gibbs’ former NCIS boss Former Special Agent Mike Franks (Muse Watson). Gibbs had been living in Baja, Mexico iwth Franks at the beginning of the season (see “Shalom” and “Escaped” ).
Gibbs calls Franks and drops the names Sunburst and Puchenko, raising the ire of Franks who cautions Gibbs that another Russian, Arkady Kobach (V.J. Foster) is who he really wants and who is especially dangerous. Franks has no love for either Puchenko or Kobach because of their involvement in arms sales -- “from Mogadishu to Baghdad” — that were responsible for American deaths. Franks joins Gibbs in Washington, DC when Director Shepard informs Gibbs that Homeland Security Official Roy Carver (Geoff Pierson) had arrived to take Puchenko into Homeland Security holding. Franks is already familiar with Carver, having worked with him while in the CIA fifteen years before, when Carver, Puchenko, and Kobach were working together. Carver’s relationship with these Russian sources lead to the deaths of Americans, a fact Franks simmers over.
Meanwhile, Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum) conducts the autopsy on Petty Officer Allen, and while he can identify the path of the bullet (ending in the man’s stomach) that killed the man, Ducky cannot find the bullet. Without the bullet, Puchenko cannot be held any longer and must be released to Roy Carver. Franks, sensing that Puchenko is about to get away, plays his Sunburst card, informing Carver that he made a copy of the Starburst case file before he left the government. This buys Gibbs and his team time to find a bullet. By this time, Ducky has concluded, with the help of Abby, that the man must have vomited, expelling the bullet, and Gibbs sends Mossad Agent Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) and Agent Tim McGee (Sean Murray) on the undesirable journey to locate the vomit and bullet, which they ultimately do.
Article comments
1 - Catrina Marlow
One flaw I spotted in this episode. In the JAG/NCIS crossover, Gibbs says he spent 6 months undercover in Russia. Wouldn't his Russian be a little more fluent? Just a thought...