We’re back with another NCIS recap and to begin, we see two high school seniors sneaking into an abandoned building to spray paint. After some back and forth talk about their upcoming college plans, a playful verbal scuffle and one of the boys picks up a backpack and tosses it out the window. A second later, the sound of screeching tires stops them in their tracks and the camera pans to an overturned truck, with rifles spilling out of the back.
After the credits, we see Bishop practicing her fighting skills at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. She’s not doing so well, as Tony and Tim look on. When asked how she did during her shooting, she wryly responds that they gave her a gun. The boys reveal they have a case and call her “Probie” as they begin to leave.
The scene of the accident reveals the driver of the truck was carrying not only civilian rifles, but also Marine Corp. crates. Gibbs wants to see if anything was left behind, so naturally, the guys decide to send Bishop to do the work, using their nickname for her once again.
At first the name is endearing, at least until they leave her with the dirty work at the crime scene. Bishop searched the inside of the truck, only to find out the driver of the truck practically lived there, since there were dirty clothes, adult magazines, and buckets for, well, bathroom habits. Further searching reveals a crowbar.
Holding the crowbar, Gibbs heads toward Tony, who has found a backpack with blue spray paint, which matches paint found on the van’s windshield. Gibbs uses the crowbar to pry open the crates, only to find armored bulletproof vests, which are missing the label number.
Back at the lab, Abby realized that because the vests didn’t come with a stock number, which all Marine vests are given, they were most likely defective. After test-firing the suspected faulty vest and a working vest, she found the ceramic plates in the former vest broke up into shards and ripped into the gel dummy, revealing the vests found in the truck were faulty and someone was trying to sell them.
In the squad room, Bishop comes in to find Tim at his desk, talking to his girlfriend, Delilah, on the phone. Delilah wants to come see everyone, but because she was recently paralyzed, she isn’t ready to be seen, despite Tim’s reassurance it will be okay. After hanging up, Tim talks about not being sure what to do, to which Tony says not to make her feel self-conscious.
The team talks about where they are with the investigation and after reviewing some photos, they reveal who the owner of the backpack is. The boys are brought in for questioning, where they seem eager to be thrown into jail, since it will apparently help them get into college. Tony is incredulous as, once he finally gets information on the driver’s description, including a t-shirt logo for a gun fair, they ask to punch him.
Bishop and Tony walk around the gun show with their badges out and Bishop goes on about her target shooting. Fay Gussman, who runs the gun show, then finds them. Tony asks if she recognizes the van and might know the driver, so she leaves to get a name and address.
Bishop and Tony come across a vendor named Karen, who is selling military grade bulletproof vests, which are sold on the civilian market. Fay comes back with the name Corey Ruxin. A search of Ruxin’s home leads to the discovery of his bullet-ridden body.
Ducky and Palmer are examining the body while the team examines the scene. Bishop is eager to do the work and Tony reveals he’s keeping a secret for her. Palmer has been acting weird as well and upon being asked, he reveals a birth mother has signed adoption papers to Jimmy and his wife, Breena, to adopt her baby. Palmer is nervous about jinxing it, in case she changes her mind.
In the lab, Abby is glaring at Desmond Honeycutt, the quality control manager at Dearmond Dynamics System. He claims they knew about the manufacturer defect and had labeled all of the vests to be destroyed, although that clearly did not happen. After typing in his name, Abby finds out the vest from Honeycutt’s company was used by a soldier, Freddie Linn, two years earlier, who became paralyzed from the waist down.
Gibbs and Tim go to a field and Freddie joins them from having been skydiving. When he finds out why Gibbs and Tim are there, he’s clearly shaken and doesn’t want to go down that path again about what happened to him. He reveals the vest he got was a gift from his mother. Tim, clearly deep in thought, carefully asks him how long it took him to get used to the wheelchair. Linn tells him “You don’t” and it’s about moving on.
In the morgue, Ducky and Palmer examine the photos of Linn’s wounds, which match the gel dummy Abby used. She is chewing on one of those bubble gum cigars that are passed around when a baby’s born. When she discovers this, she tells Jimmy he needs to knock on wood to make sure he doesn’t jinx anything.
In the squad room, Bishop tells Gibbs that Linn’s mother is coming and she didn’t remember sending her son the vest. Suddenly, a crowd of angry mothers come in, all of whom had apparently sent their sons and daughters vests. She is threatening to get the media involved over the faulty body armor.
Eventually, they are able to calm the mothers down enough to keep them from going to the media. Tim is going to go through the recall paper work when he discovers Delilah is in the squad room, where Tony is listing disabled movie characters. Tim begins to scold him, but apparently Delilah had made it a contest. When Gibbs comes in, she thanks them all for catching Parsa. Bishop comes downstairs, having found out Mrs. Linn wrote a check to the organization run by Karen, the vendor from earlier, for a care package to be taken to her son. The vest was a part of that package and three other mothers had also used Karen’s services for care packages.
The team immediately begins to work on preventing any more care packages from being sent to troops, and Gibbs sends Delilah to MTAC to talk to the Department of Defense. An awkward moment ensues in the elevator when McGee and Delilah have trouble moving around due to her wheelchair. McGee tries to make her feel better with a movie character, but it’s not the same.
Bishop and Tony are surveying Karen in their car and when she begins to leave, they stop her. After being interrogated, she is shocked to learn the vests she has been sending were faulty. Horrified, she is willing to cooperate to help them figure out where the rest of the faulty equipment is going.
The Department of Defense has ordered all Marine units to use only Military-issued body armor, but one team in Afghanistan are unreachable and two of the soldiers have faulty gear. The boys send Bishop up to MTAC to wait for word on the team in Afghanistan. She deduces having “two hot chicks”, both her and Delilah, up there will give them an advantage. Delilah thinks her wheelchair will work as well.
Tony and Tim are going through the recall paperwork and find out Honeycutt’s company did properly dispose of the vests. However, further digging from Tim finds out the company hired a recycling company to dispose of the vests, and instead of losing money, they gained money. Benson Honeycutt was involved.
Tony is interrogating Honeycutt, who still insists he followed the law in disposing the vests. When Gibbs comes in, he is not having any of his explanations. It’s revealed the recycling company paid for the contract to buy the armor, meaning they would be sold. Tim comes in with phone records, revealing Honeycutt has been getting calls from Fay Gussman, who not only runs the gun expo, but also owns the recycling company.
Gibbs sets up a meeting between Honeycutt and Gussman. Gussman arrives at the meeting site, only to be ambushed by the team. After running into her office trailer, tense moments await the team and just as they are about to move toward the trailer, she fires at them. Bishop takes a hit while Gibbs and Tim fire into the trailer. Moments later, the door opens, revealing Gussman had put on one of the faulty vests and has been shot multiple times. She promptly falls to the ground, dead. Tony runs over to Bishop and unzips her jacket, to find her own vest worked.
Back in the squad room, Delilah hears back from the team in Afghanistan to find the soldiers made it back safely. Tim announces they have all of the body armor accounted for. Delilah was happy to be included in the investigation, but she’s still not ready to be back at work. She asks if she can give Tim a ride home, only Tim has another stop he wants to make. He takes her to Freddie Linn’s field, so she can talk to someone who knows what it’s like to be in a wheelchair. After kissing Tim, she suggests they go skydiving. The screen pauses on Tim’s incredulous look.
Photo: Robert Voets/CBS