When a maid at The Audley Hotel discovers a scientist part of the Office of Naval Research naked, dead and with a bag over his head in the bathroom, the team must work to find out what happened. Here’s what went down on NCIS: Sydney episode 7, "Bunker Down."
A banquet gone wrong
Dempsey (Todd Lasance) and Jackson (Sean Sagar) headed to the hotel while the other team members left for a banquet. On the scene, Dr. Penrose (William McInnes) said the victim passed away a few hours earlier. Local police believed it was an accident, insinuating the plastic bag over his head was part of sex games gone wrong. The victim had a fresh-looking abrasion near his temple and blood under his fingernails, possibly from a struggle. Dempsey and Penrose were going over possible theories when Jackson discovered something: the same medallion box the team received for the banquet, except his was empty.
Back at the headquarters, Jackson pulled security footage from the hotel and spotted a maid acting strange. She constantly angled her hand away from the camera, and she only hit one room: the victim's. The maid "cleaned" the room in four minutes and was out.
Mackey (Olivia Swann), Cooper (Tuuli Narkler) and Gleeson (Mavournee Hazel) headed to the Gaiametric banquet, which didn't have cell phone reception. Elevators opened to a black-tie affair, and the ladies handed over their entry medallions. Doors sealed — not just locked — behind them. The CEO of Gaiametric, Ada Pack (Kimie Tsukakoshi), addressed the room and said, jokingly (sort of), they were stuck in the bunker and no one knew where they were. With no reception and a location that you couldn’t find on a map, the bunker hadn't been functional in decades, with no air in or at, so oxygen levels would be gone in two hours.
Her point was everyone's personal technology relies on satellites, but what if there was a device that just used Earth's magnetic field? That's what the company had created. However, when Pack attempted to show the technology at work, it failed, creating a massive problem. Lauren Fox (Adele Samus), the event planner, was the only person who knew where they were, and that two-hour countdown to oxygen depletion is serious. So 50 people, including a 38-week pregnant woman, Monica Rowe (Georgina Haig), were at risk.
Meanwhile, Dempsey and Jackson were trying to get more information on the invitation, since it was connected to their team and the victim. However, with a blank website and zero social media posts, they feared their teammates were without service. They come across Foxs social media page, however, in connection with Gaiametric.
Another victim, same M.O.
Mackey, Cooper and Gleeson worked on finding a way out. When Cooper went to the bar for a tool, she overheard Pack and Rohit Rashik (Abhilash Kaimal), who was part of the company competing against Gaiametric, arguing. Pack believed he turned off her technology and demanded he turn it back on, but he denied involvement.
Dempsey and Jackson showed up to where the reception part of the banquet was supposed to occur, but everyone is of course trapped in the bunker. They found Fox in the back, dead with a plastic bag over her head. Penrose discovered a sticky substance on her hands.
In the bunker, the ladies managed to get a door open, which led them to a war room. There was a phone they were able to use to call Dempsey. Mackey gave him as many details as she could before the power went out and the line went dead.
Cooper found the breaker and brought the lights back on. The phone ran on a copper line and didn't need electricity, so why did the call drop? Someone must have cut the line and ripped it out from the hallway. They theorized someone wanted to kill the CEO so they would be free to use the technology. If that was true, this killer had an escape plan to get out of there when oxygen was running low.
Cooper started patting people down. When she got to Rashik, he didn’t have anything on him. Gleeson, meanwhile, found ash on one of the doors, discovering a chimney-like structure. The problem was it wasn’t designed to bring air in, but to take air out. They quickly put the door back on. Mackey went to check on the group, only to learn the pregnant woman Rowe's water broke. She checked her pulse, which was doing well, and tried to keep her calm.
20 minutes left of oxygen
Using clues from the ladies, Dempsey and Jackson believed they found the bunker. They arrived at the HMAS Watson Naval Base, but there was nothing there. The two called Penrose and worked to pin down where the right bunker was.
Rowe went into labor, while Mackey, Cooper and Gleeson kept searching for a way out. In the war room there were bags of flour. Mackey said they were going to make a thermobaric bomb to collapse part of the chimney to make way for air to come in. They used gunpowder, the copper wire from the cut phone line and the fuse box. The homemade bomb exploded, but instead of creating an air hole, it filled the chimney with debris. Defeated, yet trying to make their last moments light, the three women collapsed and expected the end.
Getting weaker and weaker, Cooper mentioned her pulse had been dropping for the past hour. That's when it hit Mackey — the pregnant woman's pulse had been fine. She was waiting for everyone in the bunker to die before she made her move. Mackey ordered Cooper and Gleeson up.
At the same time, Dempsey and Jackson arrived at the bunker via helicopter and rushed to the bunker doors. Penrose called them to reveal the results were in and that sticky residue on Fox's hands was theatrical glue, a substance used to glue on wigs.
One minute left of oxygen
With one minute left until complete oxygen depletion, Dempsey and Jackson unsealed the bunker to find the 50 people on the brink of death. However Mackey found the strength to hurry her way to find Rowe. Dempsey followed her to the bathroom where she was keeping up the I’m-in-labor act. They found an oxygen tank in one of the bathroom stalls. It turned out that Rowe wasn’t actually pregnant, and her fake stomach hid the jamming device she used to get into Gaiametric's technology.
Dempsey took off her wig and Mackey peeled off her extensive facial makeup and mask. Who was it? The blonde woman from the dating app in episode 1. She dressed up as a maid and killed the scientist in his hotel room in order to steal the medallion so she could gain access to the banquet.
If you remember, the first episode ended on a cliffhanger where we didn't know if the blonde woman was dead or alive. Well, here's our answer. With the blonde woman in the interrogation room and all NCIS team members recovered, the episode ends on a to be continued.
New episodes of NCIS: Sydney air live on Tuesdays on CBS and stream on Paramount Plus.
