Red Cell (NCIS)

Infobox Television episode | Title = Red Cell
Colour =
Series = NCIS
Season = 2
Episode = 20


Airdate = April 26, 2005
Production = 02x20
Writer = Christopher Silber
Director = Dennis Smith
Guests = Jeff Wincott as Gunnery Sgt. Leeka Jon Wellner as Simon Frankel Sherman Augustus as Captain LeMay Judd Trichter as Hunter Huxley Marie Dellegrazie as Ashley Simmons
Episode list = Episode chronology
Prev = Conspiracy Theory
Next = Hometown Hero

Red Cell is the 20^th episode in the 2^nd season of the TV series "NCIS".

Plot

During a college fraternity “hell week” ritual, a college student comes across a body of Marine Sgt. Joseph Turner, a student enrolled in the Waverly University NROTC program. The body shows wounds of a fight and died from a broken neck. During the autopsy Palmer notices that the neck break is too clean to have come from a fall. Such a clean break could only have been from murder. Welts on the sergeant’s body lead Gibbs to think he might have been tortured before his death.

A hidden container on Turner’s hard drive contains an emailed picture of Turner with crosshairs pointed at him. During interviews with the head of the NROTC unit, Marine Captain LeMay, and Turner’s gunny, Gunnery Sergeant Leeka, the team learns that Turner had run-ins with an anti-war protester on campus. They also learn that Turner’s friend, Petty Officer Finnegan Blake has been missing since Friday. When DiNozzo and McGee search Blake’s dorm room, they meet a geeky student Simon Frankel, who DiNozzo nicknames Urkel. He quickly annoys DiNozzo who leaves him embarrassingly outside guarding the door to the dorm room. Bloody rags are found in Blake’s room and a similar photo was found on Blake’s computer, only in this photo Blake is in the crosshairs, not Turner.

The team begins to investigate Hunter Huxley, the peace activist who argued and fought with Blake and Turner. DiNozzo and Kate arrest Huxley at a protest and bring him in for questioning. Meanwhile back at the office, McGee has hacked into the campus server using Turner’s account. NCIS begins to receive audio instant messages from a hacker who says that NCIS is on the wrong track and needs to “look beyond the surface.” McGee tries to trace the IMs while Abby talks to him. McGee traces the hacker to a building right off campus and the team storms the building, finding out it is a sorority house and Gibbs bursts in on dozens of college girls in their underwear. It turns out the person sending the IMs was using a wireless hub while outside. This earns McGee the scorn of Gibbs.

Back at the lab Abby found out that blood found on Turner’s body matched that of Blake. Two possibilities discussed are that Blake and Turner were killed together or that Blake killed Turner and ran away. At this point, the hacker again contacts NCIS and tells them to go to a specific point on campus to find out the truth. Gibbs, DiNozzo, and Kate go to the college and wait, and a ski-masked man chases another man through the quad. The fleeing man is trapped at a fence and the ski-masked man shoots him. DiNozzo and Kate draw weapons but Gibbs stops them, seeing that the gun was just a paintball gun. At this moment Abby calls enthusiastically saying she discovered the cause of the welts on Turner’s body. Gibbs surprises her by saying that it was from a paintball gun. Gibbs interviews the two students, who are also NROTC students. He persuades them to give them the names of the students who play the paintball game. The group calls themselves the Red Cell, hence the name of the episode. Gibbs also learns that Blake and Turner got in a fight over paintball on Friday night at a bar and threw some punches. This furthers the suspicion that Blake killed Turner.

McGee is able to redeem himself by remembering that in Blake’s room he had the charger to an expensive PDA phone that automatically connects to the internet. McGee tracks the phone to a location on campus. When they get to the site, they find it is a field filled with construction equipment. Worried he has messed up again, McGee starts to dig and soon uncovers Blake’s body, whose neck has obviously been broken since the head is pointing backwards in the grave. Ducky dates his death to hours after Turner’s death. He and Gibbs suspect that the two were killed while face to face with their killer, who has military training.

Short on leads, they search the NROTC unit records to try to find the hacker by searching for people who have advanced knowledge of computers. They narrow the list down to Frankel, and DiNozzo and McGee sneak up on him the next time he talked to NCIS. They bring him for interrogation, where he quickly annoys DiNozzo again. DiNozzo begins to play mind games with Frankel, correctly assuming that Frankel is a loner who wanted to be a part of Red Cell. After threatening to charge him with interfering with the investigation and explaining how his actions are suspicious, he gets Frankel to tell him that he thinks that Blake killed Turner over a girl in the unit they both liked, Ashley Simmons. DiNozzo ends the interview by telling Frankel that Blake is dead.

When the team goes to interview Ashley Simmons, they find her being punished by the Gunny. DiNozzo and Kate bring her down to the car, where she tells them that the Blake and Turner confronted the Gunny over the fact that the Gunny was making Simmons sleep with him. At this same time, Gibbs has been talking to the Gunny. Gibbs says that Blake had been found dead, but the Gunny lets it slip that Blake and Turner died the same way, even though Gibbs had not told him that. The Gunny locks the door to the room as Gibbs draws his weapon to arrest the Gunny but the Gunny kicks it out of his hand and they start fighting, with much of the furniture in the room falling victim to their fight. By the time DiNozzo and Kate break into the room, Gibbs, slightly battered, has incapacitated the Gunny and he is arrested for the murder of the two students.

Production notes

* While Tony and Kate are looking for the mysterious hacker in the outdoor area at the college, the suspicious man with the red hat was looking at the "Scarlet Secret" website, which was reused from an earlier episode, Forced Entry.
* As DiNozzo and McGee close in on the creepy instant messager, Abby types "Hello, you twisted piece of s..." just as the scene wipes to the campus cafeteria. As they approach Frankel, the message appearing on his screen is "Hello, you twisted piece of crap".