- A Marine fails to report for duty. He's an EOD tech with a critical qualification, so the NCIS investigates.
- A Marine gunnery sergeant, Atlas, has failed to report for duty after a weekend; he's a technician in explosive-ordnance disposal (EOD), one of a handful of people with a critical qualification, so his unauthorized absence (UA) brings in the NCIS. Gibbs and company track him, and they find a newspaper reporter with some helpful information; meanwhile Atlas is shackled to a wall inside a small concrete-block room with a decomposing human body. Abby learns that three other Marines also have disappeared from EOD units in the past eight years, and she finds a pattern; Tony encounters Atlas. Abby, Gibbs, and Kate connect the dots, then Gibbs and Kate find Tony and Atlas.—DocRushing
- An attractive female reporter is in a bar listening to a Marine (Gunnery Sergeant Bill Atlas) who insists that two of his Marine buddies have disappeared, and he may be next. He tells her that if, in fact, he is next, she could be killed, too. As they hold hands, she points out that if her husband catches her with him, she WILL be dead. The waitress brings him a drink he didn't order, but he drinks it anyway, and immediately leaves the bar. He quickly becomes dizzy, his vision blurs, and he passes out. He awakens to find himself in a concrete cell, chained by the ankle. There is at least one dead body in the cell with him.
The investigation of the missing Marine begins at the bar, where Atlas' truck is still parked after several days. Tony flirts shamelessly with the waitress as they question her. Gibbs finds the Zippo lighter and cigarette Atlas dropped when he passed out. Gibbs becomes frustrated with DiNozzo's flirtation, but Tony redeems himself by providing information he got from the waitress: the woman Atlas was with was Carol Powers, a reporter for "The Post." Powers is questioned, but can't help much.
Kate finds that no one is missing from Atlas' Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit, but a new CO checked into his command a month ago. CO Joe Sacco's file contains a letter of punishment for getting into a fight in 1992, as a first lieutenant, with a couple of enlisted men including Atlas. Meanwhile, Atlas remains in his damp cell, into which his kidnapper releases a swarm of bees. Abby discovers, based on analysis of the cigarette, that Atlas had ingested a combination of codeine and speed. The combination is illegal here, but available OTC in the Philippines and Okinawa. Major Sacco's last duty station was Okinawa, so the team is off to Quantico to interview him. Sacco indicates that he's not too surprised by Atlas' absence, and that he's had trouble with alcohol in the past. He says Atlas is a marginal Marine and he's not really missed. He explains that the 1992 incident was simply a couple of Marines getting drunk; Atlas had swung at him and Sacco overreacted.
As the team returns to headquarters with Gibbs driving like a crazy man, Abby calls and informs them that three Marines have gone missing from EOD units in the last eight years. They were all considered deserters, they all served with Atlas under Sacco, and they were all in the Philippines in 1992. Abby also finds that there is one remaining member of Sacco's EOD unit unaccounted for: Major Mark Cohen, who was given a Bad Conduct Discharge for assaulting his CO in 1999.
While Abby goes off to a party in her dog collar and black leather jacket, Tony and Kate remain at work, eventually falling asleep at their desks.
Atlas still hasn't seen his tormentor, but awakens to the slam of the cell door and finds a cross necklace on the floor. He picks it up and yells at the closed door, "Oh my God, I didn't know!"
Tony convinces Gibbs to let him shadow Sacco, hoping he will lead him to Atlas. Abby reports that Cohen isn't a suspect, as he was found dead last year in a sewer system in Old Town Alexandria, chained to a wall. Abby doesn't like the idea of Tony tailing Sacco alone; she has a "weird feeling" about it. Kate thinks the feeling may be the results of the 18 Red Bulls Abby drank at the party the night before. Tony follows Sacco to the same bar from the opening scenes, and flirts with the waitress as he drinks a ginger ale.
When Kate and Gibbs look at the evidence recovered from the scene of Cohen's death, they find a cross necklace. Kate points out that Cohen was Jewish, but Sacco is Baptist. Tony follows Sacco out of the bar and calls Gibbs to check in as he starts to get the same blurry vision and dizziness Atlas experienced before he passed out. On the phone with Gibbs, Tony says he doesn't feel too well, and mumbles, "I think I screwed up boss," right before he passes out. He awakens in the same cell as Atlas, who says, "Welcome to hell." Atlas' face is covered with huge bee stings. Tony tells Atlas not to worry, because of Rule 9: "Those rules they teach you in the Marine Corps." When Atlas asks, "What rules?" Tony responds, "I always suspected Gibbs was making stuff up." But as he pulls a knife hidden in his belt buckle, he tells Atlas that Rule 9 is: "Never go anywhere without a knife." As Tony is attempting to get their chains off, Atlas holds up the cross and says he needs to confess, that he deserves to be there. He says, "It was an accident. He must have found out about it. We killed four girls...Sacco was in love with one of them." The four were the four buddies' (Atlas' and the other three missing men's) girlfriends, one of whom left Sacco for Atlas. When the men left the Philippines, they tried to smuggle the young women back to the states in shipping containers. Lt. Sacco split the men up at the last minute and put them on different ships, and none of them was on the ship the girls were on. The girls only had enough food and water to last a few days, and died of starvation and dehydration in the shipping containers.
Gibbs finds Tony's cell phone where he dropped it. Back at headquarters, McGee arrives and asks where to set up shop. Ducky reports that Cohen had a high concentration of honeybee venom, but that he died of starvation over a period of weeks or months.
Abby and McGee work side by side in Abby's lab, sharing Abby's Caf-Pow. Abby discovers that the fingerprint she lifted matches one she lifted from Powers' credit card receipt, and they conclude that Powers was working with Sacco.
Sacco's car is found by Manassas PD at the entrance of a sewer system. Gibbs and Kate arrive and enter the system of tunnels as Tony and Atlas escape from the cell and try to find their way through the maze. Sacco is also looking for Atlas, yelling for him as he makes his way through the tunnels. He comes upon Tony and Atlas, and is surprised to find Tony. Sacco says he isn't going to shoot anybody, that they have to get Atlas out. He says he followed "her" here, and she's completely insane, and they have to get out before she finds them. Tony asks, "Who?" just as Sacco is shot from behind by the waitress from the bar...one of the girlfriends, who had actually survived and had been rescued from the container by Sacco. She said she had been the youngest, and the other girls gave her their food and water and died one by one; they were covered in bee stings and wearing cross necklaces. She said at first Sacco was good to her, but then he tried to control her. So for eight years, she's been hunting and killing the men who left her friends and her to die.
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