Captured by authorities while delivering smallpox vaccine to a hospital in Panama, Jack Dawkins is questioned by a government bureaucrat. The Panamanians know Jack must be CIA, but he insists he's an aid worker. The guards drag him off to a jail cell, beat him a bit, then leave him to think. It's not long before gunfire echoes outside. The prison wall explodes and masked men pour in, shooting the guards. The men yell at each other to find the American, he's worth a lot of money. Poor Jack - out of the frying pan and into a fryer.
Mo prepares for work, talking to her reflection in the mirror, bucking herself up for another day as the president's new briefer. Charlie is being debriefed about her shooting of a man in Qatar, so she misses the notification that Jack has been kidnapped by Colombian FARC rebels in Panama. The rebels want $10 million and the release of a prisoner from a U.S. jail. The team springs into action to prepare the president's brief.
In the Oval Office, President Payton considers options for rescuing Jack. Unfortunately she doesn't have all the intel she needs because the PDB pages on FARC that Lucas was responsible for are missing. Mo is thrown by the screw-up just as DP's phone rings. The D.C. police had a bomb scare: a backpack with the Ar Rissalah symbol on it was left at the Washington Monument - but the pack was empty. Is it a joke? A warning? Chief of Staff DP knows the only opinion Payton wants is Charlie's.
At CIA headquarters, Charlie apologizes to the team for not telling them Fatah was her asset. Once Nick reports they have Sheik Hakam in their sights, they'll all coordinate the attack together. They wave her off. What's past is past. Getting Fatah now is all that matters.
Jack and his captors trudge through the Panamanian jungle in a rainstorm. They come to a raging river where they are expecting to find a bridge. Seeing his opening, Jack kills two of his captors, steals a walkie-talkie and escapes into the jungle.
Charlie liaises with Agent Scott of the FBI to run down whoever left the backpack at the Washington Monument. The problem is that jokesters have flooded the Internet with pictures of landmarks with the Ar Rissalah symbol in the frame. The CIA is staring at over 200,000 photographs, trying to grab a photographer's face reflected in car windows to run through facial recognition programs in hopes of producing a lead. It's a daunting task. After yelling at Lucas for screwing up the PDB, Mo huddles with Charlie to figure out what to do about finding Jack. The truth is, she wants Charlie back on the job. Satellites can only see but so much in a jungle. What if, Charlie wonders, they started listening instead?
In Saudi Arabia, Al Moosari drives Nick into an alley, where several men with guns await. After Nick is forced to strip, Al Moosari smashes his phone. Satisfied he can't be tracked, the Moose is ready to take Nick to Fatah. Maybe.
Someone leaves another empty backpack with the Ar Rissalah symbol lying around, this one at the Hoover Dam. This time, traces of bomb-making chemicals are found inside. Will the next one have a bomb? The FBI thinks so. After promising to share intel, Mo asks Scott to leave the ops room, so the CIA can interpret results from a listening dish trained on the Panamanian jungle, which has detected the low frequency of a walkie-talkie. A satellite picks up a giant V, perhaps made out of tree branches, in a jungle clearing. That's a military code for S.O.S. The team gets a fix on Jack and sends in the SEALs. At the White House, DP suggests exploiting the rescue to push back on Senator Green and her cronies, who've been attacking Payton over the Ar Rissalah threat. Marshall, the president's husband, doesn't like the idea of using Dawkins' rescue as political clout and argues with his wife. There's trouble in the paradise that is the White House.
In the desert, Al Moosari gives Nick one more test: since Nick claims he can sell gems to raise funds for Fatah, he must identify every gem in a bag full of them - or else he's not leaving that desert. Luckily, Nick passes the test. Meanwhile, the SEALs swoop into the Panamanian jungle, looking for Jack, only to find about a dozen dead FARC rebels. The killers were professionals and left no shell casings behind. The CIA tracks a helicopter that flew out of the jungle to a nearby airport and a private plane that left the airport bound for Virginia. If someone wanted to embarrass the president, rescuing Jack before the military can and depositing him practically on her doorstep would do it. When the private plane carrying Jack lands, Charlie is there to greet him and send him off to Walter Reed Hospital to get checked out. Then she confronts the suit-clad businessman with him, who introduces himself as Victor Gantry. He's a smooth talker, but Charlie's unimpressed. Obviously, she's not a fan of mercenaries.
President Payton calls her husband to apologize for their argument. He's out for a walk without his security detail, standing on the stoop of a brownstone somewhere. He and his wife say, "I love you." As they hang up, the brownstone's door opens. Senator Kyle Green, the president's harshest critic, greets Marshall and welcomes him inside. A little later, he emerges, holding an envelope that contains the infamous photo of Charlie, Nick and Fatah on the black site boat.
Senator Green is really on a roll. One of her aides, Jennifer Ramirez, tells DP that Green intends to call for an investigation into the president and the CIA's handling of the backpack bomb threats. Meanwhile, Payton stops by Walter Reed to apologize to Jack Dawkins. As Commander-in-Chief, she violated the first rule of combat by leaving Jack behind. Apology accepted, Jack's not bothered. When can he go back to work?
While Kurt has a word with Mo about Lucas - he's drinking again, that's why he screwed up the briefing - Charlie and Dash research Victor Gantry, who works for Controlled Outcomes, owned by The Krieg Group. Claiming the rescue of Dawkins was more like an audition, Charlie advises Dash to get everything he can on Krieg and forward it to Mo for the PDB. But Mo's not interested, having resigned her position as the president's briefer. Moments later, the team is summoned to the Vault, where Dash has identified someone who took one of the Ar Rissalah photos on the Internet. She is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed sorority girl named Stacy. What does she want with Ar Rissalah?
Payton summons Charlie to the Oval Office to relate her visit with Dawkins; she let him down, left him stranded. Charlie knows his rescue was the work of The Krieg Group and proceeds to tell Payton about their research on Victor Gantry. The president tells Charlie to include it in the next day's briefing, and yes, this is an invitation to resume her old job.
