Michael Weston and Fiona looked at mounds of photographs they had taken during their surveillance of Anson's apartment and commiserated about how difficult it was going to be trying to somehow eavesdrop on his conversations which uses the military-grade, encrypted relay antenna they had spotted. Mike said they would need to break in to the security firm across the street that he was relaying his signal through – "I didn't say it would be easy," he responded to Fiona's expression that told him he was crazy. They paid a window washer a "couple grand" to leave town and give them their uniforms then used their hanging scaffold to break through a 20th floor window. Fiona prepared charges to "accidentally" cut some cables and they harnessed in and hung on while the platform swung through the window. Fiona cloned their servers communication logs then they laid by the window ready to act for the security guards who came rushing in. They traced several of Anson's calls to an address in Miami and staked it out. Who should they find living there but Madeline's boyfriend Benny and he acted like he had been trained in a bit of spy craft. Mike took a cab to meet with Pierce and Fiona was installed in her favorite activity – surveillance.
Pearce gave Michael his first real assignment from the agency, and just to save him the trouble of doing it she had already counted on
Sam and
Jesse to be his team, she just hadn't told them about it. The agency intercepted calls from
William Resnick, a high-end weapons engineer, ordering guidance chips for delivery to a Liberian chemical company – not good. The guy had been off the grid for awhile, chemical companies don't use guidance chips and Liberians don't have chemical companies. The CIA wanted Mike to run the op and send Sam and Jesse in to possibly extract the assumed rogue engineer. She said Sam could stand to mend some fences and Mike should act like a team player. So, standing there looking at the heavily armed complex was when Mike sprung it on both of them that they were the ones to be going in! Missile parts had been delivered, a guidance expert was inside, an abandoned facility had been occupied for a month and they were to find out what was up. Mike told them that it had been arranged they would be swapped in for two tech guys going to deliver the chips that Resnick had ordered.
"Pierce put together our cover before she knew we would do it?" Jesse blurted unbelievably. Before Jesse could say any more, Sam interjected disgustedly
"not lovin' how this went down Mike, but I'm not going to pass up a chance to bag a traitor." They had to bluff their way past angry guards to be allowed inside only to find more guards watching Resnick – a hostage. Sam knew they needed to be invited back in order to help Resnick so they faked not having the right connectors. Jesse whispered that they were CIA and he needed to cooperate because he wouldn’t get another chance. Resnick told him that a lunatic warlord,
Joseph Kamba, had kidnapped his daughter
Sophie and was making him build the missile. He agreed to play along when they told Kamba that the spec's for the chip had changed and they had brought the wrong chip so would need to come back with another. Kamba slugged Resnick for incompetence and held Jesse hostage to assure Sam coming back.
"That's not how I do business," Sam said.
"It is exactly how I do business," Kamba countered.
Pearce told them that Kamba was a first class monster even by sub-Saharan Africa standards. She knew that the factory and a house in Cutler Bay had been rented by the same people. Mike and Fiona were going to go try a rescue of the girl and Sam was to go back in, hopefully with a bunch of weapons or something. When Pierce added a new task to the mission to get the spec's for the missile, Sam flew off the handle.
"Don't you dare say Mission Critical lady," he threatened and Mike backed him up that Jesse was the top priority. Sam and Mike took guns apart and portioned all the parts throughout their gear and inside panels of the car. Mike brought heat sensitive binoculars to where Fiona was staking out the house. When she went to the door with cookies pretending to be a new neighbor, Mike was able to tell that there were five guards holding someone in an upper room hostage. However, at the factory, Kamba wouldn't let Sam bring his car inside so they didn't even have one gun they could use. So this time they had to talk Resnick into burning his hand in order to give them an excuse to stay inside and help him finish the missile. Again, Kamba blamed it on Resnick and squeezed his burned hand painfully. Sam called Mike to tell him about the guns so he told him that he would bury more guns just outside the fence and the trick now was to get Kamba to move the fence. They set up some mock sparks for him to see but when they tried to explain the missile to him, he stopped them by saying:
"all I care about is if I have a missile that will reach Monrovia from the Sierra Leon border. I'll let the target worry about how it works." When they powered up the sparks flew and so did Kamba, into a rage. He finally did take Jesse and Resnick outside so they could "check" and they told him that he needed to move the fence back – to which he eventually submitted but not without a lot of gun pointing. When Mike came back to extract Sadie, everyone was gone; Kamba had brought her back to the factory to taunt Resnick with killing her. So, now they weren't allowed to go near the guns that Mike had left for them. Mike's plan "D" now became to have Sam convince Kamba that one of his guards was plotting against them. He and Fiona would blow a gas line in order to sell it. He told Sam to do it like
"Ukraine '07" – which apparently meant like a job they did together. Jesse and Resnick got the missile ready to blow and Sam, with much difficulty and help from an explosion from Mike, convinced Kamba that a guard was sabotaging his missile. They then convinced him to let his missile explode killing his guards by telling him that he could take them back to build another for him. That got them close to where Mike had planted the guns and they were able to take down Kamba when his attention was diverted by the explosion. As usual, Pierce whined at them because her bosses wanted the missile spec's. She told them
"the job got done but neither of you made a lot of friends with this." Sam looked at her condescendingly and said
"well, giving the CIA half of what they want is a Sam Axe specialty." She told Mike that the CIA was going to get Resnick and his daughter out of the country then observed
"I'll say this for you Westen, you sure know how to run an op." "What Op," he replied.
"We were never here."
Fiona saw enough about Benny to know that he had been trained as an asset and sent Michael over to tell Madeline. Of course she blubbered and questioned and wouldn't believe him that he had traced calls from Anson to Benny who was using her to spy on them. He told her she needed to trust him but she emphatically said:
"NO, not on this one. I'll find out the truth my own way, and if you're right I'll plant the bug myself." Madeline went over to Benny's unannounced and went through his drawers. She found a folder of photographs that Benny had taken, surveillance of Michael. Benny caught her and she told him that she was there to make salmon dinner for her boyfriend. She did as she said she would and planted a bug in his phone. Mike and his mother, Madeline, set outside Benny's house listening to the bug she had planted. She, very melancholy, wondered aloud
"I wonder if it was ALL a lie. I thought he had feelings for me." Mike consolingly said
"it's never all lies, it's always more complicated, he probably did have feelings." While they listened, Benny got a call from Anson who asked if he had received the package. Mike immediately knew what was going to happen and made a run for Benny's house; but before he got close. the house blew up in front of them.
