While out at a bar, Alfonso Vega sees his brother’s car on TV involved in a high-speed chase. He receives a call from his brother, Lance Cpl. Roman Vega, telling him, “It’s happening. Wherever you are, you’ve got to run!” The car hits a pothole and explodes.
You may have guessed Roman didn’t die in the crash, but that was only one element of an episode that created fear with perception. Arriving at the accident scene, Gibbs and his team find traces of radioactive material surrounding Vega’s car, but the body found in the car could not be positively identified as Vega.
A representative from a private intelligence firm told Gibbs and Vance that Roman Vega was involved with a Peruvian terrorist group called “Libertad Nueva” that had been threatening to detonate dirty bombs on U.S. soil. On Vega’s computer, the team found a video of him ordering his men to wait to hear from him before detonation.
Meanwhile, Ducky identified the body from Vega’s car as John Cook. Looking into Cook’s background, the team found that though he had perfect teeth, he had been visiting dentists very frequently. One dentist suspected Cook was behind a series of X-ray machine robberies. The team deduced the material from the robberies was enough for five dirty bombs.
When the team found Vega, he told Gibbs that Cook hired him, but he thought he was making Marine training videos. Discovering the truth, he turned on Cook, leading to the car crash. Gibbs eliminated Roman as a suspect and turned his attention to the dentist–just as the dentist was found dead at the base of a bridge with a note confessing to the bomb plot.
Finally, Gibbs and Vance went back to the source of the information on Vega, the rep from the intelligence firm. They accused him of setting Vega up, of planting details of the bomb plot to scare Congress into passing a bad defense bill that would have been good for his firm. I caught on along with Gibbs and Vance. I might have caught on sooner, but I trusted the rep’s information at first. This got me thinking, as I’m sure the writers wanted, of all the times fear has led to bad policy.
A couple of moments I especially liked in this episode: Gibbs and McGee found once of the dirty bombs in a bus terminal. After evacuating the terminal with thirty seconds left on the timer, Gibbs ordered McGee to leave, too, but he disobeyed. It was the classic hero scenario, except Gibbs cut the wrong wire on the bomb. He was only saved because the bomb didn’t have the right chemistry.
And finally, it seems M. Allison Hart’s interest in Gibbs is personal. She gets plenty of requests for pro bono work, but only takes cases that put her in Gibbs’s path–in this case representing the Vega brothers. The final freeze-frame was of them almost kissing. It will be interesting to see where their relationship goes.
