1.08: "Minimum Security"

by DC

opening scene: a man driving a car nearly hits some bikers and runs over their bike. He's dead.

Gerald identifies the things in his stomach as emeralds, and they are what killed him. The dead man is a petty officer, Kalil Said, a translator at Guantanamo Bay. He was carrying letters from NCIS Special Agent Paula Cassidy, the NCIS agent there. Gibbs gets them a priority ride to Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) - he likes the bouncy cargo plane with canvas seats, but this time they are going on a Gulfstream. Tony is excited about the plane, Gibbs tells him to get to work; Tony is excited about the weather, Kate tells him he's reading a government site; Gibbs and Kate talk about Cassidy; Tony is excited about the plane, Gibbs tells him to get to work. Tony's delight is little diminished by Gibbs and Kate's not sharing in it.

The morning after they arrive, Tony wakes to see an iguana on the pillow next to him. He gives a girly scream and jumps up to get his gun to point at it. Gibbs and Kate come running in - and then they see how Tony sleeps. ::cough:: Gibbs goes out to get coffee. Not long after, Bill Gamal, translator from Camp Delta, arrives to help. Tony goes to investigate Cassidy, and Gibbs tells him to observe her. Gibbs allows Tony to drink sasparilla if he wants, like Shane (Alan Ladd). It is one movie Tony does not know, and Kate must explain Gibbs' reference. Gibbs, Kate, and Gamal go to question Nassir while Tony and Paula are at the bar. Gibbs calls them back and proceeds to chew Cassidy out while Tony and Kate investigate her apartment.

Nassir swallowed Afghanistan emeralds (some of the purest and most beautiful in the world), used a laxative at Gitmo to get them out. Said was going to do the same thing to get them into the US. Abby then discovers that Said was getting instructions that Bin Laden wanted his son-in-law killed. Cassidy remembers that Said's translations were longer than her questions and regrets not having Gamal listen in on her interrogations. They decide to transfer Nassir into minimum security, like Paula had promised, and have him try to kill the son-in-law, first so that they will have something incontrovertible with which to charge Nassir, second so they can identify the son-in-law. Then, maybe the son-in-law will talk about what he knows, when he realizes his father-in-law tried to have him killed.

The closing of the case is all the women: Paula and Kate really come through well.

Cassidy is *good* in that interrogation, and Gamal, translating, plays along admirably. She has guards remove Nassir's cuffs, then tells them Gibbs was taken back to Washington for not doing his job well. Gamal begins to reprove her, but she tells him to translate. She gains Nassir's trust again and sends him off to minimum security. The team sets up elsewhere. Gibbs asks Kate (being Secret Service), where she wants to put the snipers. Kate then requests Nassir's new change of clothes and sews in a tiny camera into the trim so they can tell where he's going. When they temporarily lose him, it's Kate who finds him first because of the camera; he's switched groups and is headed back into the barracks. When they get into the barracks, it is Cassidy who shoots Nassir--but not fatally, so as not to make him a martyr.

They are flying back in the Gulfstream, and Cassidy sits alone while Tony looks sad. Kate cons him into going to sit with Cassidy to make up. She is chuckling to herself as he goes, and Gibbs thinks she, like most women, are trying to fix things that don't need it. Kate says it makes them feel good; Gibbs says scotch does the same thing. Kate smiles.
 

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Crazy Credits

Watch when Kate and Gibbs run into Tony's room. Kate is wearing a basketball jersey from the University of Southern California as her pj's. Sasha Alexander is an alumna of USC - the crosstown rival of Mark Harmon's alma mater, UCLA. She did it as a joke; Harmon did not know ("Entertainment Tonight" segment).

(Pranks are quite common on the set; Alexander has told stories of Harmon stuffing a suitcase she had to carry with sandbags; she retaliated by putting stuff in his prop coffee (for Gibbs). Once out shooting exteriors, he ran a stick along the inside of her foot (like a snake) to make her scream - unfortunately, it was in the middle of a explosion shot that they needed and they had to cut around it. She said in a "Good Day Live" interview he put little dead animals in her pockets. (EW.)

The crew once told her that she had to sit in on a stunt - Kate was in the passenger's side seat while Gibbs turned the car, and since they could see her, they said, she had to be in the car with Harmon's stunt double. She got in gamely - and then was somewhat nauseated after the stunt. When she got out, she said the crew was very, very quiet...especially since she could have let her stunt double do the stunt.

In the same vein, Sean Murray's nickname 'Baby Duck' came from Sasha Alexander, who described touching his hair on his head like touching a baby duck.)