- 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.
- Tim gets his first taste of bossing, albeit it only over fellow nerd Bishop, when Tony puts him in charge on land, himself being aboard a ship with Gibbs for a training, while Bishop needs SciFi fan help to get perspective on her own failure in a combat simulation. A drifting corpse, spotted by Gibbs, is identified as crewman of the freighter San Dominick. When it's boarded by the Coast Guard, whose CGIS Agent Abigail Borin rivals for charge with Gibbs, its captain Tom O'Rourke, who survived an earlier pirate raid, and first mate James Meyer seem oddly uncooperative. Tony and Gibbs must work out why, which relates to contraband aboard and surprisingly layered crimes, including an unsavory murder on land handled by team Tim and Ducky.—KGF Vissers
- Open with Ellie Bishop sneaking through a Navy ship cautiously with her gun drawn. She radios that she's tracked the final suspect to her location. When she goes in, she orders the suspect to put his hands up. He doesn't and she's jumped from behind. Then Gibbs removes his mask and announces Ellie is dead.
Later, Ellie is bummed she failed the training exercise. Coast guard agent Abigail Borin is aboard and asks Tony about Lead Pendergast, a friend of hers. He says it was a dalliance, but didn't work out.
Tony tells Ellie she did fine on the test, but needs to worry less about procedure and more about her instincts next time.
Up on deck, Gibbs is staring out into the water when Borin joins him. They both yell "man overboard!"
Later, the victim is hauled on deck, already dead. He's a civilian named Joe Willis from the crew of the San Dominick. Gibbs asks Ellie what she can learn from the body. He hasn't been floating in the water long and she thinks the cut on his head was from a fight.
In the ship's command center, Borin reports that the San Dominick isn't answering its radio and is far off course. Gibbs orders Ellie back to NCIS while the ship goes after the San Dominick.
Back at NCIS, McGee has background on Joe Willis. He served 15 years in the Navy and is working as an armed guard on the cargo ship. Ellie is still beating herself up over the test so McGee tells her it's designed to be unpassable, like the Kobiyashi Maru from "Star Trek." Well, except Gibbs passed.
The Navy cruiser pulls over the San Dominick, where Gibbs and Borin are greeted by the affable First Mate James Meyer. He tells them the captain is busy. He says they went off course to avoid the bad weather and the radio is on the fritz. He doesn't know anything about Joe Willis being missing, so they show him a picture of Willis' body.
Below deck, Gibbs and Borin meet with the captain Tom O'Rourke, who doesn't want to lose time to help with their investigation. Then he collapses and Borin sees he's been stabbed.
In the morgue, Duckie confirms that Willis drowned, but not in the ocean. He also says the victim is not Joe Willis -- the dead man had a medical condition that would have kept him out of the Navy and Joe served.
Back aboard the ship, Meyer shows Gibbs and another crewmember, who follows them closely, to the radio room. They find blood everywhere and a post-it with numbers on it. When Gibbs bends over to look at it, he takes note of the shifty crew members shoes. He also sees the radio has been sabotaged. Then he orders the man out of the room so he can talk to Meyer alone.
Alone with Meyer, Gibbs confronts Meyer about the fact that Ronaldo isn't wearing the proper steel-toed footwear and demands to know what's going on.
Back on the Navy ship, where Borin returned with the wounded captain, Abby calls and tells them the victim is actually a Venezuelan named Ernesto Alandro who is wanted in five countries for piracy. She emailed thema list of all his known associates. Borin recognizes Renaldo.
Tony radios the information to Gibbs, but before he can answer, Renaldo busts in holding a Navy petty officer hostage.
Tony and Borin conference with Ellie and McGee, who tell them Ernesto got aboard the San Dominick by impersonating Willis, who was last seen at a bar in Norfolk 10 days ago.
Ellie relays an Interpol report about Ernesto's last piracy two years ago -- when he took captain Tom O'Rourke hostage for two weeks. Tony signs off by telling McGee he's in charge.
With Renaldo and two other armed men standing over them, Gibbs asks Meyer for information. There are 12 crew and six or seven pirates. The crew is being held in the mess deck. Gibbs tries to help Petty Officer Patricia Felton stop the bleeding from where Renaldo cracked her in the head and also keeps her calm. When Renaldo sees, he rips the handkerchief away. Gibbs ignores him and reapplies it, telling Renaldo he's in over his head and should answer the radio, get his money and get off the ship.
Renaldo radios Tony demanding $10 million within an hour.
At Joe Willis' apartment, McGee and Ellie find it empty, trashed and stinky. They find boxes of ammo and fake ship IDs. They also find Joe Willis dead in the bath tub.
With O'Rourke strapped to a gurney aboard the Navy ship, Tony talks to him before the medivac helicopter takes him. He asks for his chewing tobacco, but Tony says it's in evidence. O'Rourke says he recognized Ernesto Alandro immediately and tried to stop him. After the crew was locked up in the mess, when O'Rourke was alone with him in the radio room, he attacked Alandro and threw his body overboard, hoping someone would find the body.
With the ransom hour up, Borin radios Renaldo and tries to stall him, but he sees through it. Renaldo hangs up and yanks Felton to her feet Meyer tries to stop him, then Gibbs stands up and volunteers to take her place.
Tony radios Renaldo again, saying they will have the money in 30 minutes. Borin is on the satellite phone trying to get any kind of bills to give them. Renaldo marches Gibbs through the bowels of the ship and tells Tony he's going to make an example of him. Gibbs finally gets tired of Renaldo and turns and attacks.
Tony and Borin hear a gunshot then wait until they hear Gibbs report that he's fine. Renaldo has a gunshot wound to his leg.
McGee visits Duckie in the morgue, where he reports that Joe Willis' body was preserved in his bathtub in chemicals to slow decomposition. He's been dead five to seven days.
Gibbs puts a tourniquet on Renaldo's leg and tells him to radio to his friends that he's fine. Renaldo says they were going to contact the shipping company for ransom but when O'Rourke's fight with Alandro destroyed the radio, their plan went to hell.
Gibbs tightens Renaldo's tourniquet to get the location of the sixth hijacker on board.
Back at NCIS, Ellie has found tons of encrypted emails with shipping times and petty cash drops on Alandro's laptop, showing the operation was clearly carefully planned the financed.
McGee comes down to visit Abby doing his best Gibbs impression. She's trying to ID eight different DNA samples and says Willis was stored in dead animal deodorizer.
Back on the Navy ship, Borin and Tony look at the matches to several of the hijackers, whom Tony says look like members of an evil boy band. They're all small time criminals, but someone smuggled them into the country and made them fake IDs. Borin thinks they're missing something.
In the office, Ellie tells McGee she traced the encrypted emails to a Kinko's outside Norfolk.
Abby comes up to report she knows what the numbers found at the crime scene mean. It's a locator number for a shipping container on the San Dominick, owned by LCD Liquidated, a shell company that ships out of the US to countries with loose banking laws. They're being investigated for laundering money.
McGee cites Rule 70: "Keep digging until you hit bottom." Abby points out to "McGibbs" that there is no Rule 70 and the power has gone to his head.
Renaldo marches Gibbs into the mess hall, where Renaldo calls his fellow hijacker over. Once he's nearby, Gibbs pulls his gun and disarms the man. Meyers tells Gibbs the hijackers took Felton.
Renaldo shows Gibbs to the container his man was supposed to be guarding. They find it empty and Gibbs finds a sophisticated bomb hidden in the doorway.
Gibbs hears a noise and turns to see another hijacker holding Felton hostage with a gun to her head. Renaldo clarifies that the bomb is not theirs.
It's counting down past three minutes. Gibbs says he'll disarm it if the hijacker lets Felton go. In Spanish, Renaldo tells Jaime not to trust Gibbs.
Tony and Borin join them in the cargo hold and also draw on Jaime. Borin tells them there was no mention of the escape boat Renaldo is expecting in the operational plans they found. Gibbs explains that they were set up to take the fall and the money was never on the boat.
With the counter down past 1 minute, Jaime still won't surrender. Gibbs offers to shoot him, or just go straight to diffusing the bomb. With 30 second left, Jaime finally surrenders. Gibbs walks away from the bomb to cuff Jaime, letting it count down to zero.
Nothing happens. Then Gibbs reveals the wire he pulled when he first saw the bomb. Borin punches him in the shoulder.
Tony looks inside the shipping container and sees chewing tobacco.
Back on land, Tony and Borin catch up to O'Rourke as he's checking on stacks of bills in the back of his truck. They explain they matched his DNA in the chewing tobacco found in the shipping container, and found video surveillance of him buying tons of dead animal deodorizer at a store two miles from the Kinkos where he sent the emails from.
When they ask if he was partners with Alandro, O'Rourke says Alandro tortured him for those 10 days when he held him hostage and he only used him to set up the hijacking, always planning to kill him.
Back at NCIS, Tony tells McGee he did a good job, not blowing anything up or causing any international incidents. Ellie reports she watched "Star Trek 2" last night and thinks she knows how Gibbs passed his exercise. She thinks Gibbs fixed it, like Captain Kirk. Tony explains to her why she won't ever get to ask Gibbs for the truth (no accusing the boss of cheating).
Left alone in the office, McGee tries on Gibbs' chair for size. Naturally, Gibbs finds him. "Really? Rule 70, McGee?" Gibbs says.
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