A Year of NCIS, Day 207: Rekindled (Episode 9.21)

Episode: Rekindled, Episode 9.21.

Air Date: April 17, 2012.

The Victim: Carter Plimpton, a civilian contractor.  Jurisdiction is established by the involvement of classified Navy files at the site of Plimpton’s death.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: Now that’s a fire!  A building is burning in Baltimore.  Firefighters valiantly fight it and finally get it under control.  One fireman finds a body.  The Captain orders an ME and the arson unit.  He also finds the remains of a Navy file jacket, marked classified.

Plot Recap:  We rejoin our leads at the fire scene.  McGee exposits that the warehouse is owned by United Equinox Electronics.  They used the warehouse to store tax records and such.  Gibbs hands Tony the classified jacket and the agents discuss that UEE worked on top secret Navy projects, and their job is to determine if anything sensitive got damaged.

Gibbs calls Tony by name and the Baltimore PD arson expert recognizes him.  He is Jason King.  Tony recognizes him too but seems nervous.  Jason was homicide for two years before he made arson and he looks forward to working with NCIS.  Tony doesn’t sound too excited about it.  And Jason is overcompensating for something because he interrupts Tony seeming to congratulate him by talking to Gibbs about the fire’s origin.  Gibbs brings Tony with him and sends Ziva and McGee to work the perimeter.

Ducky has arrived and opines that dental records are the only means of identification regarding the body.  Jason thinks the body was the ignition point and the arsonist used road flares to start it.  He is neither making eye contact with Tony nor responding to Tony’s nervous humor.  Ducky is impressed that the fire was so intense that it calcified the bone and scoured the floor. 

Jason is Johnny on the spot and has already done preliminary processing of evidence.  Every one of a nearby file cabinet’s drawers is filled with burned files, except for one.  The lock was broken off prior to the fire, so somebody wanted whatever was in the drawer. 

McGee ran the card reader on the security gate and the last person swiped in forty minutes before the fire was reported.  Carter Plimpton is the person’s name.  His physical measurements are consistent with the body and he was a civilian employee of UEE.  Accordingly, Tony says it’s not NCIS’ case and seems relieved.  But Gibbs disagrees and says that Jason is working with them.

Back at HQ, McGee reports that dental records confirm the body is Carter Plimpton, a systems analyst for UEE.  He spent the last four years in their electrical component department.  Plimpton fits a lot of stereotypes to Tony’s delight and McGee’s chagrin: single, video game message board poster, anime fan. 

The conversation moves on, and Ziva brings up Jason, noting that Tony’s “friend” is hot.  Tony clarifies, “He’s not my friend.”  Tony met him once and is surprised Jason recognized him. 

Gibbs appears and, for once, doesn’t interrupt squad room story time.  Tony says Jason was nine-years old when they met.  Perhaps sensing Tony’s obvious discomfort (as does Ziva), Gibbs changes the subject.  In a dramatic way.  Over Plimpton’s picture on the big screen, Gibbs tapes a picture of the Phantom Eight, an old school black ops group from the Navy’s Watcher Fleet, and that NCIS has already tangled with twice this season.  Nature of the Beast, Episode 9.1; Housekeeping, Episode 9.12.

Turns out Plimpton was a member of the Phantom Eight as well.  Which makes three members of the team murdered in the last several months. Gibbs orders Ziva and McGee to talk to Plimpton’s supervisor at UEE and tells Tony to dig deeper on Plimpton’s background. 

(McGee is just happy that Plimpton is not (necessarily) the video game/animation nerd he appeared to be).

In autopsy, Jason is working with Ducky and finds himself impressed with Ducky’s scientific rigor.  Gibbs joins.  Ducky reports that Plimpton’s skin was double burned.  He was tortured with a flare before he was set on fire.  And the burn pattern, a lot on the right arm, only three on the left, seems to indicate that the killer got what he wanted and stopped the torture. 

Ziva and McGee approach Jack Murdoch of UEE.  They are wearing coveralls to prevent static contamination of electronics.  McGee geeks out with Murdoch a bit.  Or tries.  Murdoch hates nerd-shop talk and is triggered enough to be an asshole about it.  He’d rather cut to the chase and talk about Plimpton.  Plimpton worked with product testing and failure points.  He was authorized to be at the warehouse where he died in order to file non-critical product reports.  Murdoch insists there was nothing in the warehouse with national security implications.  He’ll even send NCIS the inventory.  He clarifies that classified does not mean “top secret.”  Murdoch is not aware of Plimpton’s history with Watcher Fleet.  But he says Plimpton was always rambling about Skyrim and Old Republic, role playing games.

Abby is researching exothermic chemical reactions.  She reports that she found evidence of thermite on the victim.  Thermite burns until it exhausts itself and can’t be put out.  Yet, it didn’t completely destroy the body.  So, Abby thinks that the thermite was diluted to slow the burn and that this sort of dilution is not characteristic of arsonists.  This perp is about control.

Tony encounters Jason in the squad room.  Tony follows him to the elevator.  Tony has done his homework and is impressed with Jason being an arson investigator at his age.  And for giving up a basketball scholarship to Duke to be a cop.  They naturally measure over who had the better jump shot.  Tony thinks they should talk about how they last left things.  Jason is not on board.  Tony suggests that Jason hasn’t forgiven Tony for his sister.  Jason heartily agrees.  And then leaves.

McGee has been digging through the warehouse inventory from UEE.  He pulls Gibbs over to the secret conversation spot behind the stairwell and admits to hacking into the Navy intelligence database.  Watcher Fleet worked on a top-secret project called Aquamarine.  It stuck out because there was a file box on the warehouse inventory listed under the same name.  McGee doesn’t know what Aquamarine was, but it was initiated while Plimpton was with Watcher Fleet.

The team backgrounds Plimpton again.  He left Watcher Fleet in 2008 to take a job with UEE. Jason says not many arsonists use thermite, so if they can cross reference criminal records, they might get a hit.  McGee does and finds Billy Wayne, who is serving life in prison for killing his wife and two kids with a fire he set in his home.  Not the warehouse guy obviously, but he might give them a look into the mind of the person who is.

Gibbs and Ziva have Wayne in interrogation.  Wayne has a terrible southern accent but thinks that thermite is overkill for a warehouse full of paper.  So, someone is sending a message or they’re doing it for fun.  It may have been an experiment, or for practice.  Wayne notes that he used a slow burn thermite mix to give him time to get away when he set a thermite device over a boiler room.  Wayne is a nutcase and his philosophical discourse on fire is straight out of a comic book.  Gibbs asks if Wayne shared his slow burn thermite recipe.  Wayne says he shared it with Janice, a lady writing a book about him.

Abby and Jason are watching results of some tests she ran to inhibit a thermite reaction.  She asks Jason what got him into fire.  He says he was in an arson fire as a kid.  They never caught the guy.  Abby hugs him.  Then they high five over continued thermite testing.

McGee still has no information from Navy intel on Aquamarine and UEE has no record of the project either.  As to Janice the biographer, she used a fake ID to visit Wayne in prison.  They have a photo though, and facial rec is working on it. 

An alarm goes off and McGee reports that the Baltimore Fire Department is responding to a suspicious blaze on a cargo ship less than a mile from the warehouse fire.

The team and Jason arrive at the cargo ship.  There were no injuries this time, but someone ignited some tarps over a cargo hold.  The hold was empty.  Which makes no sense.  Jason and Tony head off to investigate.  And to continue measuring.  But Jason smells something.  They head down into the cargo hold.  Tony is skeptical.  He mentions having been agent afloat, and says weird smells are par for the course on a ship.  They follow the ship’s wiring to a control box.  Jason opens it and triggers a thermite device that runs the length of the cord.  Jason is fast enough to get Tony out of the room and get the door sealed.  Since it’s an airlock, the fire will stay contained until the oxygen is gone.  Jason calls it a trap.  And then tells Tony they’re even. 

In Abby’s lab, she and Jason tell Gibbs about the device which started the fire.  Someone put a thermite charge in a junction box.  The tarp fire was set as a distraction.  The thermite device, also slow burning, burned through but didn’t destroy the wiring, creating an electrical fire.  Electrical fires don’t usually cause huge fireballs.  This one did because the wiring was flawed, and the intense heat of the thermite carbonized it.  So rather than working as an insulator, the coating on the wiring became a conductor.  If Jason hadn’t shut the door, the wiring throughout the ship would have gone up.  Meaning the arsonist knew the wiring weakness.  Because UEE manufactured the wiring.  Gibbs thinks that’s what was in the missing file.

Gibbs and McGee have Murdoch in interrogation.  They also have UEE internal memos they found encrypted on Plimpton’s laptop.  Gibbs accuses Murdoch of supplying the Navy with faulty wiring intentionally.  Murdoch denies it.  Plimpton requested a recall investigation several months back, but Murdoch says it was his job.  He adds that only under rare circumstances could the wiring be corrupted.  The statistical probability was almost zero.  McGee is not buying it, especially since someone killed a UEE employee, stole a file on faulty wiring, and then ran an applied test, all in the previous two days.  Murdoch still denies responsibility.  Gibbs shows him the Watcher Fleet photo and McGee references Aquamarine.  Murdoch insists the wiring was within tolerance and they never sold it to the Navy.  He has never heard of Watcher Fleet.  

It’s late.  Ziva and McGee observe Tony doing actual work.  Tony only does actual work when he’s sad.  They become concerned enough to ask.  They set down a newspaper article with accompanying photo of a guy in a hoodie with a small child on his back.  There’s a fire engine in the background and the words we can see talk about a fire rescue.  The hoodie obscures the person’s face, but the agents have guessed it was Tony.  He saved Jason from a fire.  Ziva would like to know more.  Tony pauses for a long time.  Then he says the Final Four was in Baltimore and Ohio State was getting ready to play UCLA.  Tony was out for a walk to clear his head.  He saw smoke coming out of a townhouse.  He heard a scream and went in. 

We get a flashback with “young” Tony (whose hair looks ridiculous) in a flaming building.  There’s fire everywhere.  He kicks in a door and finds young Jason King hiding in a closet.  Tony grabs him and starts heading down the hall when a female child calls out for help.  Then a fiery support beam falls in from the ceiling and there’s no way to get to the girl.  Jason screams and Tony hesitates for a very long time, but there’s no way through.  They have to leave, and Jason begs Tony not to leave his sister.  But Tony does.  Because he has no choice.

In the present, Tony says it was save Jason or risk all their lives trying to get to the sister.  She was four. 

Gibbs interrupts, wanting an update.  Ziva reports that Billy Wayne made a phone call from prison to a Mary Gardocki.  Her passport photo matches the prison security footage.  Tony gets ready to go pick up Mary. 

Gibbs walks over and picks up the newspaper photo.  “You helped.  Others didn’t.”  “I know” replies Tony.  “Good.  Get out of here,” Gibbs responds.

Mary Gardocki is in interrogation and wearing a conspicuous scarf around her neck.  We see Gibbs note it and smirk.  She says she’s writing a book.  Gibbs calls it bull.  He pulled her employment records, and she works for a chemical company, celling C-4 plastic explosives.  But what she does is legal.  Gibbs shows her the Phantom Eight picture and asks if she ever sold to the Navy Watcher Fleet.  She seems surprised they exist and claims to have never met them.  She asks Gibbs for an intro.  Gibbs says the best salesmen are the best liars, and wonders if Mary lying.  She says no.  Gibbs leans in…and takes off her scarf…to expose bandages.  Gibbs calls the thermite burns nasty.  Mary admits she has been using Billy Wayne to develop a more stable thermite.  She claims a patent could means millions.  But she swears she didn’t kill anyone.  She has been in the burn center for the last three days.

McGee confirms Mary’s alibi.  Ziva reports that Jack Murdoch sent over a list of four ships with the bad wiring (didn’t he say he didn’t sell it to the Navy?) and none have reported problems.  The team still can’t find a motive for any of this.  Gibbs wants to know how this all connects to the Navy. 

Abby calls.  Gibbs walks down and she and Jason have determined that ammonium phosphate is the diluting agent in the thermite.  Interestingly, ammonium phosphate is the key ingredient in fire retardant.  The best part is the brand of retardant used is a brand sold exclusively to the US Forestry Service and there’s no middleman.  Abby has a buyer with photo IDs.  And now facial rec gives us Bruce Johnson.  Who Gibbs and Jason already met because he was the Fire Department Site Inspector at the original crime scene.  Jason thinks he was an impostor, particularly as the position is typically occupied by a civilian.  Jason is mad at himself for missing it, but I’m not sure what Jason could have done differently.  Gibbs is quick to forgive and makes sure Jason comes along for the bust.

Johnson is leaving his house when he sees the NCIS sedans coming his way.  He gets in his car and starts it up.  The agents and Jason emerge with their guns drawn and Gibbs demands that Johnson turn off the car.  Johnson wants a deal.  Gibbs says maybe.  Johnson starts to sing anyway and says the guy who hired him said Plimpton had information about some bum wiring.  Johnson says he didn’t mean to kill Plimpton, but Plimpton wouldn’t talk.  Gibbs asks who hired him Johnson asks if they have a deal.  Gibbs loudly demands again that Johnson turn off the car.  Probably should have gotten the name first, because Johnson keying off the ignition sets off a thermite bomb.  We see Johnson’s panicked face as he tries to slap out the flames.  Jason moves to get him out of the car, but Tony forces him down behind the sedan right before Johnson’s car explodes. 

The Fire Department arrives.  A fireman hands McGee a device which he identifies as a C-4 fuel charge set to the ignition.  Ziva found the missing file from the UEE inside Johnson’s house.  And it’s a list of every Navy warship that contains the faulty wiring.   So, Murdoch lied about not selling the faulty wiring to the Navy (which they knew because Murdoch just sent over names of ships…ah, forget it).  Plimpton, having found the problem, sent a copy of his memo to the Navy.  The current Watcher Fleet was trying to fix the wiring problem, and that was the Aquamarine op.  Only a third of the fleet has been retrofitted. 

But still…motive?  Gibbs says terrorism.

At the squad room, the agents are making calls to Naval command.  Tony is ordering pizza.  Gibbs figures if the wiring weakness remains, the bad guys can hire another arsonist.  McGee wants to know how the weakness in the fleet was uncovered if Aquamarine was top secret.  Gibbs calls it a good question.  But, busy as he is, he sees Jason leaving and tells Tony to go with him.  Tony says that Jason doesn’t see it.  Gibbs says to help him. 

So, Tony follows Jason to the elevator again.  Jason thinks he could have saved Johnson and he accuses Tony of giving up.  Again.  Calls it his “specialty.”  Tony looks back at Gibbs with a “Why me?” look, but Gibbs knows what’s best and stares Tony into the elevator with Jason.  Tony tells Jason again that there was nothing to be done on either occasion.  Jason thinks Tony could have tried.  Tony stops the elevator.  He says, “I ran into a burning building and dragged your ass out.  You’re welcome by the way.”  Jason says he heard his sister’s screams.  Tony says he wasn’t the only one.  And that night, Tony learned you can’t save everyone.  Sometimes, you have to pick.  Tony picked Jason.  Otherwise all three would have died that night and Jason knows it.  Jason says she was his baby sister, and he was supposed to be taking care of her.  Tony says he became a cop because of Jason and because it was the first time in his life he made a difference.  He has been trying to do that ever since.  “Me too,” says Jason.  “I know,” says Tony and starts up the elevator.  He compliments Jason again for his career path.  And ends it with, “She’s gone.  We’re not.  Focus on the ones you can still save.”  The elevator stops and Jason gets off.  “I’ll try,” he says.  They nod at each other.  And maybe that’s closure.

McGee joins Gibbs on the way to MTAC.  Gibbs is concerned about the Watcher Fleet microchips located in the arms of the Phantom Eight members.  He wonders if they contained the information about the wiring on the Navy ships.  McGee thought the chips were all accounted for.  Gibbs is not so sure.  He enters MTAC…

…and the scene shifts to the USS Brewer.  A serviceman drops his phone through a grate.  He heads down below to get it and looks at his family on the screen saver.  He smiles.  Then he sees a bright light under a door.  And then a massive explosion billows outward, killing the serviceman and continuing on.  The episode ends mid-explosion, and we fade to black and white.  

Quotables: Nothing jumped out.

Ziva-propisms: None.

Tony Awards: Tony references Johnny Storm, the Human Torch and the movie Fantastic Four (2005).  He invokes the usual parade of sexy animated females: Ariel from The Little Mermaid (1989)and Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), and even adds Betty Rubble from The Flintstones.  He compares Jason King’s smell detection to Lassie.  Then he uses a pun on Orson Welles’s name when he refers to Jason as “Arson Welles.”

Abby mentions Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and Backdraft (1991).

Abby Road: Abby roasts s’mores on a Bunsen burner.

McNicknames: None.

Ducky Tales: None. 

The Rest of the Story:

-Tony was a cop in Baltimore before he came to NCIS.  Baltimore, Episode 8.22.

-Rule #8: Never assume.

-Tony played college basketball at Ohio State.

-Tony mentions being Agent Afloat.  See the beginning of Season 6.

-Tony has made a lot of sad faces in the last two seasons: The Good Son, Episode 9.19; Secrets, Episode 9.15, Newborn King, Episode 9.11, Sins of the Father, Episode 9.10, Baltimore, Episode 8.22, False Witness, Episode 8.10.  I’m probably missing a couple.

-For a member of the supposedly elite Phantom Eight ops team, Plimpton sure got taken like an amateur by some arsonist for hire.

-For the full story of the Watcher Fleet microchips, see the end of Season 8 and Nature of the Beast, Episode 9.1.

Casting Call: Jason King is Gaius Charles, who had long-term roles on two ‘aughts mainstays: Friday Night Lights and Grey’s Anatomy. 

Jack Murdoch is played by Peter Mackenzie, who plays the clueless boss on Black-ish and also had a recurring role on the underrated Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23.

Man, This Show Is Old:  Nothing jumped out at me.

MVP: Tony.  I think he got through to Jason.

Rating: This was another good Tony episode.  It’s always interesting to note that a character played for shallowness and superficiality nonetheless has an ongoing and deep, yet surprisingly organic, character development arc.  Every new bit of information we learn about Tony explains both why he’s a personal basket case and also why, somewhat counter-intuitively, he’s steadfast and morally uncompromising in his need to serve and protect.  Tony has taken his lumps, but he keeps putting one foot in front of the other and helping others, even if he can’t seem to help himself.  It remains compelling even if the last two seasons have turned him into a bit of a sad sack as a cost of giving him more depth.

Jason is a good foil.  He’s not rational about what happened, but who would be? The script does a good job helping him work through it while never wavering in the message that Tony both did what he had to do and knows it.

Finally, this episode sets up the final arc of this season, which ends up being quite good.  The episode is a necessary set piece but also manages to be enjoyable on its own terms. 

Seven Palmers, and only because this season has been so great.  It would be an eight in virtually any other season.

Next Time: I guess we’ll see if the whole ship exploded.

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Alex Barfield is an attorney in Atlanta, Georgia. When not practicing law or writing about NCIS, he chases his children around, volunteers at his church, grumbles about Atlanta sports, and looks for other television shows to obsess over. He can be reached at albarfie@hotmail.com or on Twitter at @AlexBarfield1 or on Facebook.