In the first new episode for 2010 the NCIS team has to investigate the death of Lieutenant Commander Brad Sayers whose body was found by two forest rangers in a remote area of a burned out forest.  The strange thing about the body they found was the fact that only one side of his body was burned. If he’d died in the forest fire why would only one side of his body be burned? This was the first clue that this incident was no accident.

As the NCIS team comes to investigate they realize that the deceased man is in a flight suit but there is no evidence of a plane crash. They are able to gather up small bits of metal debris which they eventually discovered was the remains of a rocket backpack – like in the science fiction shows.

The first thought is that the man crashed the jet pack and died in the accident, but further investigation show that he was poisoned and was probably dead before he was every strapped into the rocket pack. This leads the team to the two divorced manufactures of the rocket packs because the dead Lieutenant, as it turned out, was working part time for both companies and stealing parts from them as well.

In the end it became a classic case of greed as the murdered man’s partner poisoned him and sent him off and a jet pack nose dive in order to have 100% ownership rights to the new jet pack they both designed and built. At least that is what is implied because in this episode no one ever came right out and said why his partner killed him.

An interesting subplot of the show was with a beautiful attorney that seemed to keep showing up during the investigation causing trouble for the team as they attempted to investigate the incident. She did however point out some pretty profound illegal acts the NCIS team has done in the process of bringing criminals to justice. This one episode seems to set the foundation for an explosive cliffhanger at the end of the season.