Secret Weapon (Season 2, Episode 5)
Premise: With the bomber Rudy Carpenter dead, the marshals must track down the member of a bitter ranching family driving his truck bomb, and learn its target, before it goes off.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 5
- Case
- Truck bomb loose in Helena
- Starring
- Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes), Pete “Cal” Calvin (Logan Marshall-Green), Belle Skinner (Arielle Kebbel), Andrea Cruz (Ash Santos), Miles Kittle (Tatanka Means), Harry Gifford (Brett Cullen)
- Music
- “Dark Horse” by Vincent Neil Emerson plays at the bar.
- Guest stars
- Duke Davis Roberts as Shane Whitebear, Annie Corley as Doreen McCoy, Keean Johnson as Will McCoy, Tate Moore as Emma McCoy, Rafe Cogman as Mason McCoy
- Director
- Loren Yaconelli
- Writers
- Mark H. Semos & Anthony Florez
Summary
The Case
“Secret Weapon” opens in the dust of the blast that kills Rudy Carpenter. The marshals find the lids of the eight ANFO barrels but no explosives, plus fresh tracks from a heavy vehicle: a partner has driven the assembled bomb away. Prints on the lids belong to Derek McCoy, and the team raids his family’s home in Radersburg, farm country between Bozeman and Helena.
Doreen McCoy rails against the bank that took the family’s land, someone in the family calls Carpenter a hero, and her relatives Johnny, Mike and Emma say they know nothing. Kayce chases a runner, Will McCoy, and the two end up trapped under a collapsed barn with a cut gas line and a live wire. Kayce sets Will’s injured leg and tells him about a middle brother bullied by their sister who finally broke away, and they dig themselves out. Kayce returns with Will and the make of Derek’s truck, a white GMC box truck.
Meanwhile Miles is reprimanded for getting physical with Mike, and the team learns that Johnny is a dispatcher for Springland Trucking, which delivers ANFO in the area. Johnny’s ten-year-old son, Mason, found hiding in the basement, tells Belle that his Uncle Derek says he is Mason’s father. Andrea, chosen to question Emma despite feeling off her game, threatens to tell Johnny; Emma admits Derek blackmailed her into using Johnny’s dispatch login to pass on the ANFO details, and says he wants to hit the people who took the family’s land.
The Team
Cal, facing surgery for his cancer, names Andrea temporary team leader during his leave. Belle confronts the casino man who frightened her son, threatens his daughter, Britt, with a parole violation and promises to pay when she can. At the bar, Shane Whitebear, who got Rainwater’s approval for a marijuana grow, tells Miles he will run against Rainwater for tribal chairman and asks for his endorsement.
That night Andrea visits a teammate at home and admits she froze in a basement on the raid, that the Clegg case has left her with nightmares, and that she has been looking into her father’s murder to cope.
The ending
Spoiler: The bank in Helena that foreclosed on the McCoys is evacuated, but the bankers are at a lenders’ banquet at the Wexler Hotel a mile away. Belle spots a white box truck in traffic; with the lights held on red, the marshals close in from the driver’s blind spot and secure Derek McCoy before the bomb goes off, and a bomb disposal unit is called.
Fugitive’s fate: Derek McCoy, other or unclear.
Why it stands out
- The episode resolves the cliffhanger of “Blast Radius,” making Carpenter’s hunt the first case of Season 2 to run across two episodes.
- Cal picks Andrea to lead the team during his medical leave, the choice Gifford had questioned in the previous episode when he favored an outside candidate.