Designated Target (NCIS)

Infobox Television episode
Title = Designated Target
Colour =
Series = NCIS
Season = 5
Episode = 08


Caption = Gibbs talking to Thomas Zuri after they rescued him.
Airdate = November 13, 2007
Production = 102
Writer = Reed Steiner
Director = Colin Bucksey
Guests = Matt Riedy as Adm. Kenneth Kirkland) Demetrius Grosse as Atif Nukunda Stephen Lee as Chuck Bayliss Xolile Tshavalala as Sayda Zuri Basil Wallace as Delphin Abaka Jonathan Adams as Thomas Zuri Anthony Starke as Derrick Choyce
Episode list = Episode chronology
Prev = Requiem
Next = Lost and Found"Designated Target" is the 102nd episode of the drama television series "NCIS" and the eighth episode of the show's fifth season.

ummary

A black taxi driver, Atif Nukunda, and his passenger, Navy Admiral Kenneth Kirkland, are shot and killed by a man on a motorcycle. Gibbs and his team unsuccessfully tries to come up with a probable cause for the admiral's murder. Meanwhile, Ducky discovers that the assassin took the Nukunda's tooth and fingerprints but leaves the admiral relatively intact, leading Gibbs to believe that the assassination target was actually Nukunda. They also find out that there have been similar killing cases, and judging from the similar appearances of the victims to Nukunda, they conclude that the assassin knows only the general description of the man he's after.

Tony and Ziva go to question the taxi driver's dispatcher, Chuck Bayliss, and learn that Nukunda was working without proper license, being an Burundi immigrant who desperately needed the job. They later go to a restaurant where Burundi people often go to, but the people there aren't really cooperative due to past experience with the Burundi government, except for a professor, Delphin Abaka, who tells them that Nukunda isn't the driver's real name. He says that he doesn't know the man's real name either because he came to the United States as a refugee under an alias. However, he raises their suspicion, especially after they spots him talking to someone on the phone right after they talked. McGee tracks down the phone record and finds that the person Abaka called to is Sayda Zuri, a Burundi woman staying at a hotel who had just recently arrived in the US. However, she arrives at NCIS before they bring her in for questioning.

A brief questioning reveals the driver's real name as Thomas Zuri, Sayda's husband. She is informed by Abaka that her husband was dead, and comes in to claim her husband's body. However, when the woman was shown the corpse, she immediately says the dead body is not Thomas's. She later explains that Thomas is a political asset for the people's party against the corrupt incumbent government, and that he was smuggled to America illegally by a US government official, Derrick Choyce. NCIS then interrogates Choyce, who says that he lost contact of Thomas long ago, and all the addresses he has at hand is out-dated. Having run into a dead end, they try to reanalyze the murder cases and discover that each of the murder happened with a taxi that was dispatched, with Bayliss still working. They raid Bayliss's house, but he is killed as well, moments before they broke in.

The team then checks Choyce's banking record and discovers suspicious money exchange. Upon the second interrogation, Choyce confesses that he had been exchanging information, which he claims is completely useless since Thomas moves and switches addresses constantly. However, one of the address he gave out belongs to Bayliss, and Gibbs knows from this that he must have been forced to divulge Zuri's present address before he was killed. Choyce also gives the name of the person who was in contact with him, which is no other than Professor Abaka. The team finds Zuri being attacked by Abaka and one other man, and prevents in time the killing from happening. Thomas and Sayda reunited, but at that time it is revealed that Thomas, believing his wife was long dead, had remarried and had a child.

External links

* [http://www.tv.com/ncis/designated-target/episode/1142201/summary.html NCIS: Designated Target] - TV.com