Dead Man Walking (NCIS)

Infobox Television episode
Title = Dead Man Walking
Colour =
Series = NCIS
Season = 4
Episode = 16


Airdate = February 20, 2007
Production = 4x16
Writer = Nell Scovell
Director = Colin Bucksey
Guests = Brian Dietzen as Jimmy Palmer Liza Lapira as Michelle Lee Matthew Marsden as Lt. Roy Sanders Marc Vann as Mark Sadowski Kate Norby as Diane Russio Diane Delano as Dee Dee Chesney
Episode list = Episode chronology
Prev = Friends and Lovers
Next = Skeletons"Dead Man Walking" is the 86^th episode of the drama television series "NCIS". This storyline bears similarities to the case of Russian dissident and writer, Alexander Litvinenko who suddenly fell ill in November 2006 and died three weeks later, a rare victim of lethal polonium-210 radiation poisoning under highly suspicious circumstances. Additionally, as DiNozzo states, the plot of the poisoned man reporting his own murder is similar to that of the 1950 film "D.O.A."

Plot

Tony and Ziva speculate on how much McGee's new leather jacket must have cost him ($2000, another reference that his writing earns him good money) when he enters, escorting a man who looks very sick. The man identifies himself as Lt. Sanders working for the IAEA and asks Gibbs to investigate a murder, his own. Apparently he has been exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. While Ducky tries to determine how, Ziva is bothered by the belief that she has met Sanders before, and tries to figure out where and when. McGee at the same time has his clothes checked because Sanders coughed on him, even his new expensive Armani jacket which he fears Abby will stain. Ducky finds out that Sanders has been poisoned with alpha emissions, specifically Thallium. Ziva escorts Sanders to the Navy hospital and Gibbs and Tony talk to his co-workers and check his work-place.

In the hospital, Sanders is treated with "Prussian blue" and Ziva finds out how she knows him: they both go running in the morning and their paths cross every day. As Ziva learns more about him, she starts to become attracted to him and is getting angry that she can't do anything to save him. She goes so far as to express jealousy when one of his female co-workers, who has come to visit him, touches him. The doctor then tells her that he is getting sicker, not better, most likely because someone is still poisoning him. The team first think it's one of his co-workers and they bring him in for questioning, but this proves to be a dead end when the co-worker becomes sick as well and security footage shows him being near Sanders when the latter smoked cigars who were filled with Thallium. The team then focuses on the other co-workers and about the changed plans for an inspection of a foreign nuclear site the next week. When they find out that a nuclear plant in Uzbekistan, scheduled for inspection, is apparently re-assembling engines for the manufacturing of nuclear weapons, it becomes clear that someone is trying to keep the IAEA from inspecting it. The team checks with Sanders on who knew about the inspection and they are able to arrest the co-worker who is responsible.

When the episode ends, Ziva and Sanders are in the hospital garden, holding hands. At the end of this episode, Sanders' fate is not clear but later episodes reveal that Sanders did not survive.