Episode: 6.20, Dead Reckoning.
Air Date: March 31, 2009
The Victim: Some hoods. Then some more hoods.
Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: We have a firefight. One guy versus two. One of the two even has an automatic weapon. It does him no good. Both die. Then our big winner makes a show of wiping prints off his gun and putting it in the hands of one of the bodies. Presumably to erase evidence of his presence, and to make it look like our boys shot each other. Then our guy starts dialing on a cell phone. The camera pulls back and it’s CIA beauty queen Trent Kort. He says into the phone, “Hello, Gibbs, about that favor you owe me…”
Plot Recap: After the credits, Gibbs arrives solo at the site of Kort’s massacre. He approaches, gun out, to find the bodies. Kort appears and Gibbs expresses surprise that he’s not riding a desk. Kort figures if he’d given Gibbs too many details he wouldn’t have come. Kort suggests that the two men shot each other. Gibbs will be the first of many to not believe this story and wryly responds, “That the best story you got?”
Kort IDs the dead goons as employees of Jonathan Siravo, a known kidnapper, smuggler, dealer, you name it, who also happens to adorn NCIS’s most wanted wall. Per Kort, Siravo is back in the US but the CIA has no domestic jurisdiction. “Never seems to stop you,” Gibbs notes.
Kort got wind of a meeting and came early to check it out. The goons had the same idea. “Lucky for you they both shot each other,” Gibbs continues piling on, even noting that one of the guns is a .45 and Kort’s own weapon of choice. You know, before he started carrying a .9mm…five minutes ago.
Kort thinks Siravo will show, and that they should settle in to wait.
We don’t wait with them. We head to the squad room. Where nobody can find Gibbs. Ziva checks his computer calendar after McGee proves to be too chicken to do it. Of course, Ziva has the boys watch the elevator and the stairs. As anyone who has watched five minutes of this show knows, the calendar tells the agents nothing. Gibbs almost certainly has no idea how to use it. The agents start half-heartedly assuming the worst. Gibbs lives alone, so who would know if he had an accident? Tony suggests being crushed between a large homemade boat and an even larger bottle of bourbon.
The agents fight over who will call Gibbs. Then Tony and Ziva convince McGee to trace Gibbs’s phone on the computer. Of course, as soon as McGee locates him near Anacostia, Gibbs calls. He tells the team to saddle up and to come in quiet as they have a tip on Jonathan Siravo.
The team arrives to back up Gibbs and Tony isn’t happy to see Kort. And vice versa. Kort tells his story and Tony also scoffs at the idea that the two dead guys shot each other. Gibbs says Siravo is the priority and tells the team to form a perimeter.
Tony and Ziva are in the sedan in a side alley. Tony is complaining that Kort tried to kill him. Ziva figures maybe Kort had his reasons.
McGee repots a sedan approaching, and we see a man in a suit walk down the stairs toward the position of the bodies. He doesn’t look like Jonathan Siravo. He looks like a banker. This prompts Kort, backed by Gibbs, to approach with his gun and ask, “Who the hell are you?”
We get that answer back in the squad room. Our suspect is Perry Sterling. Sterling is a local CPA who went to Princeton, has no criminal record, and no connections to Siravo. As to Siravo, he’s a former insurance salesman, also with no criminal record. He suffered head trauma after a motorcycle accident, disappeared from the hospital after major surgery, and reappeared one year later as a major crime lord. Siravo is wanted for everything: drug smuggling in Mexico, kidnapping in Bolivia, running some kind of illegal gas pipeline operation in Ukraine, and, most recently, running a gang of Somali pirates, who are suspected of plotting to hijack the Borealis, a Panamanian-registered cargo ship that went missing in Gulf of Aden carrying US military parts and a crew of 27.
In the interrogation room, Sterling is waiting. In observation, Vance and Kort discuss the CIA’s restrictions regarding operating on American soil. Kort swears he’s going by the book now in these the early days of the Obama Administration. Vance expresses what is now universal skepticism over Kort’s story about how Siravo’s two goons died.
Gibbs interrogates Sterling and lets him chatter. And cahtter he does. Sterling almost can’t stop talking. Sterling makes some reference to overflow expenditures that might be a half-hearted effort to offer Gibbs a bribe. Then he claims he got lost- his cell phone and navigation system failed, and he just happened to walk up on two dead bodies while looking for someone to ask for directions.
But Sterling doesn’t hold to this story long. He admits he’s Siravo’s accountant. And to laundering Siravo’s money: “He responds to my creativity; I respond to his terrifying demeanor.” In fact, Sterling comes clean about everything he does for Siravo very quickly and easily. Except that he doesn’t recognize the Borealis as anything connected to Siravo. Gibbs fills him in and lets him know that “27 lives are in your hands.” Sterling figures if he rolls on Siravo, he’s dead. I figure, really, hasn’t he already rolled? Sterling clarifies that he needs immunity from prosecution or he’s not talking.
Vance agrees to contact the US Attorney about a deal, but it will take time. Gibbs leaves interrogation and he and Vance discuss the encounter with Kort and Siravo’s men. Gibbs just sort of shrugs and says it was over when he got there. Vance wants to know why Gibbs didn’t take his team to the meet, and Gibbs says, reasonably, he didn’t know what he was being called to see. And it was Kort, after all.
In the lab, Ducky has joined Abby. Abby can match slugs from our dead guys to two guns, but she also has shell casings from a third gun that happens to be nowhere. Sloppy of Kort not to police his brass. Gibbs arrives and shuts down this area of inquiry. He tells Abby the crime scene is not important and to focus on tracking Siravo. Abby has examined the phones from the two dead goons and she has Sterling’s laptop. But everything on the laptop is innocuous- spreadsheets and lots of porn. Abby’s not about to put up with Gibbs telling her she has nothing, though. Because Abby has those shell casing, and she correctly notes that evidence of a third shooter is normally Caf-Pow country, so where the hell is her Caf-Pow? Gibbs is immovable, and Abby eventually gets it and decides to process the crimes scene very, very sowly.
Back to the squad room. Kort asks for a status on the Boralis and Tony helpfully informs him that it is a boat and it’s missing. Kort tries in his own way to mend fences, but all Tony hears is “lie, lie, lie,” and can’t decide whether he’s more insulted that it’s happening or that Kort thinks they’ll buy it.
Gibbs appears and he and Tony head to MTAC. Tony enjoys excluding Kort from this field trip. Inside, Vance has located the Borealis. The ship reported the approach of Siravo’s ship, but then lost its comms in the ensuing fire fight. Regardless, Vance directs Gibbs and Tony to the screen where a ship is on fire. But the pirates never boarded the Borealis, and it’s their ship that’s on fire. And that detonates. The crew of the Borealis is fine. So, between the two goons from the opening and the ship, it looks like someone is taking out Siravo’s crew.
We head to interrogation, where Sterling is concerned about his colitis and yammers on about his deteriorating condition and his prescription meds. Sterling continues to be talky. He is also worried about the fact that Siravo appears to be liquidating his operations. Siravo has consolidated his $300 million fortune, and he is closing up shop. Sterling wonders if his meeting with Siravo was so Siravo could kill him. Gibbs, ever comforting, figures Siravo still might. Still, Sterling won’t turn over any of Siravo’s account numbers without immunity. He does gives up Victor Flores, Siravo’s number two, but Gibbs already knows about Flores. Sterling knows how to reach Flores though, so now Gibbs is interested.
In the lab, Abby and McGee have determined that Sterling spent a lot of time playing a MMORPG (LMNOP?) called Captains of Industry Three. It’s a game where players pretend to build a business and sounds like the show’s writers came up with a shitty idea for a video game, just went with it, and winked at the audience by having McGee and Abby make fun of it. Either way, regardless of whether COI 1 and 2 were any good, McGee and Abby say COI 3 is terrible and no one plays it. This is important because Abby and McGee have determined that Sterling, who plays seven hours/day, is using the empty chat rooms to send real time coded messages to Siravo’s people. They decide to play the game themselves and see if they can crack the codes.
In the squad room, Kort still not coming clean on the deaths of the two goons from the beginning and suggests a double suicide pact. Tony sarcastically suggests star-crossed lovers. Gibbs thinks there are too many questions, and orders Tony and Ziva to take Sterling to a safe house.
Gibbs and Kort are left to discuss. Kort feels frozen out of the op and tells Gibbs he thought they turned a corner. Gibbs makes clear he didn’t ask Kort to dig up dirt on Vance. Kort figures Gibbs read the file on Vance anyway (Broken Bird, Episode 6.13), but Gibbs claims “I don’t waste time on fiction.”
[Ouch- take that, viewers, including guy blogging meticulously, if occasionally infrequently, about a fictional television show].
Kort wonders what motivation he would have to mislead Gibbs but strikes an optimistic note about caution, and about trust being elusive. Gibbs sets that record straight in a heartbeat: “Between us… [trust is] impossible. But I honor my debts.” Kort continues pouring his bottle of thick cynicism on Gibbs’s waffles and notes that Gibbs isn’t really playing noble or sticking his neck out because Kort gave Gibbs the goods on Vance to use if he gets in trouble. Gibbs blows him off.
We head to the safe house, where Sterling doesn’t feel safe and seems to think he should be at the Ritz or something. Tony reminds him (and the audience) that hotels aren’t safe, being filled with people and all. Sterling keeps complaining, about the smell, about sharing rooms, about the lack of cable, and about his strict macrobiotic diet, and you’re almost rooting for him to get shot at this point. Tony certainly is.
Back to the lab. McGee and Abby are still playing Captains of Industry 3 and enjoying themselves way too much. Kort, humorless lout that he is, is scandalized by how loose this operation appears to be, what with people having fun and all. Gibbs tells Kort it’s part of the process.
Since Sterling showed McGee and Abby how to use cipher key, they’re sending a code to set up a meet with Flores now. Flores responds and wants to meet Sterling in Rock Creek park in an hour.
At the safe house, Sterling is still talking. He gives Ziva his whole sad sack life story: not good with girls; allergic to pets; bad at sports; no friends; a girl in college used him for free tutoring. A lot of money, made in the service of Siravo, should have helped, but now he figures it will get him murdered or put in prison. Ziva tries to buck up Sterling, but not too hard.
Tony shows up with food, but Sterling still needs meds and makes to send him out for that too.
At Rock Creek Park, the team arrives and finds a car at the meet location. They wonder if Flores showed up early or if they read the codes wrong. The car is clear, so Gibbs and Kort and McGee canvas and find a dead guy. And then another dead guy.
Some time passes, although not much, and Ducky and Palmer arrive to assess the corpses. Ducky determines that Flores and the other dead guy killed each other less than half an hour previous. Gibbs and Kort re-enact the shooting based on body placement and slugs, while Palmer in particular looks on, fascinated. Flores showed first and was smoking. The first shot hit Flores and he went for cover. The two perps engaged in a shoot-out and Flores got his man before dying himself. Kort thinks it was a hell of a shot for a mortally wounded Flores
McGee has located the second guy’s car, and IDs him as Luther Rake, who is low level muscle for Siravo. So Siravo hired Rake to hit Flores
In Vance’s office, the Director is pissed, at least in Gibbs’s direction, if not at Gibbs specifically. Vance thinks they don’t lose Flores before arresting him unless there’s a leak, and Vance thinks it’s “your buddy” Kort. Gibbs clarifies that Kort is not his buddy. Given that Kort has been benched and Siravo hasn’t been on a CIA list in six months, Vance is suspicious as to why he’s digging around in the trash. Vance also believes Kort gave Gibbs the Vance file. Gibbs doesn’t deny it, but claims he’s only concerned about Siravo. Vance is still after Kort’s angle and figures he’s not going to show up bearing gifts for nothing. Gibbs suggests “God and country” although he doesn’t sound like he believes it himself. Still, he doesn’t see Kort’s motivation for being a leak. Vance tells Gibbs to find out who is and then get “the CIA out of my house.”
Back at the safe house, Sterling is still a Nervous Nellie and figures if Siravo can get to Flores, he can get to Sterling. Still, the good news is that the US Marshalls are on their way. Sterling’s immunity came through. Tony explains that it’s not all sunshine and Labrador puppies, noting that Sterling’s life is about to become a litany of polygraphs and trials and other legal procedures, including more safe houses. Tony suggests Sterling give up the account numbers, but it’s unclear how that would change anything at this point.
In autopsy, Ducky summarizes his recent collection of four bodies with seven wounds from four guns. All of which they have. Ducky talks about the bodies singing different parts of a harmony and this leads to a discussion of Palmer’s barbershop quartet days in college. They talk about the “fifth note” which is the ringing cord in a harmony, and its symbolic relationship to their need to establish some forensic connection between these bodies.
Gibbs arrives and says, “horse manure.” But he’s not shitting (hah!) on their metaphor (this time). All of the bodies have horse manure on their shoes and it’s manure that Abby has somehow (chemical concentration technobabble) confirmed as coming from the same location. Which may be a meeting place, also may be where Siravo can be found.
Back at the safe house, Ziva is on the sidewalk, returning with Sterling’s medicine when she notices two guys rapidly exiting a car parked across the street. She calls Tony and tells him they’re compromised. She heads off to enter the safe house through the back.
Inside, Tony starts to move Sterling, but Ziva arrives first. She says they’re more vulnerable in transit and tells them to take cover. What happens next isn’t Gibbs vs. the Helicopter (South by Southwest, Episode 6.17), but it’s still pretty bad ass. Tony pulls Sterling into the bathroom. Ziva calls Gibbs on her cell phone and tells him they have a situation at the safe house. He asks what it is. She has him on speaker, and says, “Just a second.” She puts down the phone, pulls two guns, one in each hand, and aims one gun at each door of the safe house. The two perps attempt to enter each door simultaneously, and Ziva causally shoots them both, one with each gun. Gibbs starts loudly yelling over the parked phone for a sit-rep. Ziva, almost flouncily, picks up the phone, says, “Under control,” and hangs up.
Back at NCIS HQ, we get a shot of Gibbs smirking as he also hangs up. Then Ziva gives Sterling his meds as if there aren’t two dead guys lying on the floor. And then the U.S. Marshalls arrive and Tony and Ziva had Sterling’s chatty ass to them while they go back to their lives.
In the lab, Abby, who is not living up to her vow to not spazz every time her team members are threatened (Broken Bird, Episode 6.13; Cf. Caged, Episode 6.12), is mad about the leak even though Tony and Ziva are fine. She reports that no unusual calls occurred from either the NCIS switchboard or the phones of people with knowledge of the investigation. The NCIS internet server is secure as well, so the leak isn’t coming from inside the NCIS building. Gibbs hands over Kort’s phone number for Abby to check as well.
Meanwhile, McGee has checked the nav systems for the two cars the team found at Rock Creek Park. The common location for both cars is a horse ranch in Stafford county. There’s the manure connection.
In the evidence garage, the team makes preparations to storm the ranch. Kort insists on going, but his insistence is meaningless, and Gibbs leaves him behind.
At the ranch, the team enters, and then forcefully invades a bedroom. But all they find is a nurse and a guy in a bed in a coma. It’s Siravo, whom the team recognizes from their most wanted wall. And he is very much not running a criminal empire.
So yeah, you can see where this is going.
Back at HQ the team has determined that the fingerprints on the coma patient match Siravo. So, who is running his show? Clearly, someone built a criminal empire using the name Siravo as a front, and if the real Siravo ever wakes up, he’s going to be in for one hell of a surprise.
McGee is tracking down the source of payment for Siravo’s care. He finds the accounts, which have, or had, the requisite $300 million of Siravo’s fortune. And computer records confirm the liquidation of which Sterling spoke, but all of the money that McGee is tracking is being seized illegally, not withdrawn through channels.
And only DHS and CIA can do that.
Abby calls, so Gibbs heads to the lab and tells his team to find Kort.
In the lab, Abby would like to not be fired and not sent to jail, but she’ll take being fired if it’s one or the other. As always neither the audience nor Gibbs has any damned idea what she’s talking about and we all wait patiently for her to stop burying the lede. Abby is convinced that she has aided and abetted a homicide. She and McGee were played “like a fiddle” as the cipher term “hospital,” which they used in their public chat room message to Flores, didn’t mean emergency to Rakes, who was monitoring the chat room. It meant, “send someone there.” So, NCIS essentially put the hit out on Flores.
Gibbs puts it all together and calls to check on Kort’s location. Tony has found him, but he’s at the US Marshal’s office. Tony thinks Sterling is the last loose end and that Kort is going to kill Sterling. But Gibbs vows, “No. No he is not.”
We transition to Kort, who is getting out of his car at the Marshal’s office. Gibbs calls and catches the audience up that CIA drained all of Siravo’s accounts. And that there’s no Siravo and Kort knows damn well who has been running the operation. Gibbs makes clear that no one else dies today, and Kort has to admit he was not expecting Gibbs to turn Sterling over to the Marshals. Which seems ominous.
Kort hangs up and confronts the Marshals as Sterling is brought out of the office. Kort identifies himself as CIA and tries to explain things. One Marshal takes Sterling to the other side of a vehicle while a stand-off occurs between the second Marshall and Kort. Until Kort gets shot in the shoulder and the Marshall gets shot in the back. The other Marshal is down too. Sterling has the Marshal’s gun and is raving angry. “The CIA stole my money!” he yells, pointing the gun at Kort and demanding its return.
NCIS arrives and Sterling turns. Kort has a gun on Sterling now but doesn’t shoot him. The agents emerge and they all train their guns on Sterling as well. Gibbs tells Sterling that he’s a numbers guy so how does he like these odds? Sterling throws his gun to the ground and Tony restrains him and says, “You don’t just drop a gun that has been recently fired…You really are a madman.”
Gibbs checks on Kort who appears to be mostly OK, and asks, “How did you know it was him.” Kort simply says, “I knew it wasn’t me.”
In the squad room, the team rehashes the case. As we all know now, Sterling set his criminal empire in motion when the real Siravo got injured. But Kort wasn’t after the pirate. He was after the treasure. He found Siravo’s phony healthcare fund and cleared it all out. Kort, indicating his treated gunshot wound responds, “Didn’t know he would take it so personally.”
In summary: the CIA gets the money; NCIS gets Siravo; a threat has been neutralized. And Kort wasn’t there to shoot Sterling. He was just there to get him back before he obtained immunity for his own crimes. And in fairness, Kort didn’t kill Sterling when he could have. In the end, Kort is just trying to get back in the starting lineup at CIA, and Gibbs sort of hopes that happens because it’s possible Kort is even more dangerous behind a desk.
As he gets in the elevator to leave, Kort tells Gibbs he owes him one. Gibbs wants no more of Kort’s bullshit and declares them even.
We end on Vance and Gibbs. Vance notes that the hardest part about coaching is watching from the sidelines. They agree they do things differently, but Vance is committed to letting his QB call the plays in the last two minutes and Gibbs got NCIS a good win this time.
Quotables:
(1) McGee: [Gibbs] lives alone, maybe something happened to him. No one would know.
Tony: In a tragic story of obsessive hobbying turned deadly, an NCIS agent was discovered in his basement, crushed between a large homemade boat and an even larger bottle of bourbon. Film at 11.
(2) “Taking tips from Trent Kort now? Why don’t we just run with scissors or talk to strangers. Maybe they’ve got candy.” -Tony isn’t happy about things.
(3) Abby: McGee, that’s a terrible place to put a railroad spur. You’re never going to get clearance from the city officials.
McGee: I made a six-figure charitable contribution to the councilman’s fund, so he’s going to cut me a pretty sweet deal.
Abby: Not with the price of iron skyrocketing. You should have taken the deal with the guy from Singapore.
-Abby and McGee play Captains of Industry 3.
Tony: We gotta go?
Ziva: We are more vulnerable in transit. Take cover.
Sterling: What’s she gonna do?
Tony: You know, I don’t really know. Bathroom now!
-Goons invade the safe house. Temporarily.
Ziva-propisms: None that I caught.
Tony Awards: Tony references Bullit (1968).
Abby Road: Most of her weird was task-oriented.
McNicknames: McTardy.
Ducky Tales: Ducky discourses on Gilbert & Sullivan while Palmer talks about his college career as a tenor in a barbershop quartet.
The Rest of the Story:
-Trent Kort first appeared in Season 4 as a henchman for arms dealer Le Grenouille (Smoked, Episode 4.10). We later learned that Le Grenouille was a CIA asset and Kort was his handler (Blowback, Episode 4.14). Kort mostly hates NCIS because then-Director Shepard’s rogue play to take down Le Grenouille cost the CIA the asset and derailed Kort’s career trajectory (See generally, Bury Your Dead, Episode 5.1). Then Gibbs humiliated him, and Tony punched him in the face and Ziva glided up to prevent Kort from hitting Tony back (Internal Affairs, Episode 5.14). But Gibbs owes Kort a recent favor for procuring a CIA file on Ducky (Broken Bird, Episode 6.13), and, maybe, a file on Vance. So, that’s where we come in.
-There are still many suspects in the explosion of Tony’s car. Kort is simply one of them. Bury Your Dead, Episode 5.1.
-Ziva defending Kort’s methods is a little gross in light of later events.
-Elf Lord is a nickname Gibbs bestowed on McGee in The Voyeur’s Web, Episode 3.6. It re-appears from time to time.
-When Kort gave Gibbs the Ducky file in Broken Bird, Episode 6.13, he also gave him a file on Vance, which was a plot point last episode in Knockout, Episode 6.18. Last episode doesn’t make it clear whether Gibbs read the file, but he at least denies having read it here. Maybe that’s just what he’s telling Kort, but the audience has no way of knowing as Gibbs would have any number of reasons to be untruthful with Kort on this subject.
-Ziva says she and McGee last used the safe house. Presumably to watch over Tara Kole in Knockout, Episode 6.18.
-Rock Creek Park is a routine setting on this show dating way back. See e.g., Doppelganger, Episode 2.12.
Casting Call: Sterling is played by Christian Clemenson, who had significant roles on CSI: Miami and, how is this for a pull, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
Man, This Show Is Old: Kort’s “Yes we can” comment is a reference to the then-recent inauguration of President Barack Obama, who promised a more optimistic approach to, well, everything. Things didn’t quite work out that way.
Tony’s joke about a suicide pact between gay lovers would be a swing and a miss in our post-Obergfell v. Hodges world.
MVP: Ziva. Two guns, two perps, two bodies. While talking on a cell phone.
Rating: This is a weird episode. It’s entertaining from a character standpoint and the interplay between Vance, Gibbs and Kort keeps the attention. But the episode has an implausibly sophisticated bad guy, who still manages to be obvious if you’ve ever seen The Usual Suspects (1995). Six Palmers almost solely on the strength of the Kort appearance, but that’s it.
Next Time: Abby gets requisitioned by the FBI to decipher another scientist’s pet research project.
A Year of NCIS 