"Jennings & Rall" is the third episode of season two of the CBS drama Jericho. It was broadcast February 26, 2008.
Summary[]
The deadly Hudson River virus hits the area and a vaccine is being withheld from the citizens by a government official. Jake and the Rangers find a way to protect Jericho. Meanwhile, Hawkins convinces Beck that the new government may have a hidden agenda.
Plot[]
Grocery store owner Dale Turner and his employees are out of town on trading business. While en route to a trading post in Missouri to pick up some supplies, he comes across a military road block. The soldiers order him to turn around and use another route. Dale notices passing soldiers wearing MOPP4. Later, he finds out the town on the other side was quarantined after an outbreak of Hudson River virus.
Upon his return, Dale unloads supplies not only from nearby trading posts but from the black market. He acquired vaccines for the Hudson River Virus.
Back in Jericho, Major Beck introduces the Ravenwood administrator appointed by the Cheyenne government, the town's former adversary John Goetz. Jake Green and Goetz have a tense confrontation, during which Jake accuses Goetz for murders and pillage. However, the confrontation ends when Goetz informs Jake of a secret he knows - what he did in the Iraqi village of Safa' while working for Jennings & Rall.
Jake warns Eric that Ravenwood is a dangerous organization with no oversight. He admits to Eric that he worked for Jennings & Rall in a similar situation. After he and his colleagues got into a firefight with some Iraqi gunmen, they also shot some bystanders, including a young girl. He points out there were no repercussions because Ravenwood is above the law.
Meanwhile, Goetz wastes no time asserting his new authority when he proceeds to confiscate the Hudson River virus vaccine that Dale acquired via the black market. Goetz claims the vaccine may be contaminated and must be sent to Cheyenne to be destroyed. Eric goes to the Jennings & Rall office to try to convince a sympathetic administrator, Trish, to remove Goetz. She is powerless, though personally, she agrees with him about their abuse of power.
Jimmy is back on duty after being hospitalized for over a month. When he sees the wanted posters of Sarah Mason, he tells Beck that she is somehow connected with Robert Hawkins. Darcy, while working in the office, overhears and later tells Hawkins all she heard. Hawkins then confronts Major Beck and, in the guise as an FBI agent, accuses Beck of attempting to ruin his terrorist investigation. Beck points out that Hawkins is not registered as an FBI agent with Cheyenne, as Hawkins claims that he does not intend to register there, as his employees are with the official United States government in Columbus, and he intends to turn Sara over to them.
When Beck warns that this is treason, Hawkins replies that he's much more interested in catching a terrorist than in playing politics. He offers his help to find Sara. Hawkins is taking a risk, as Beck could either be willing to learn the truth about the Cheyenne government, or to report Hawkins to Valente. Beck does not accept or decline Hawkins' offer yet, but allows him to share information with him. And he orders Darcy be removed from her job at City Hall.
Hawkins gives Sara's prints to Beck and Jimmy, in order to prove that she killed the missing 'John Doe' that Jimmy and his deputies found a few months prior. Hawkins claims that he acquired the prints after exchanging gunfire with her.
Meanwhile, Heather is in contact via a Yaesu FT-101F amateur radio transceiver with a person from an infected town in Fall River, Missouri. The person informs Heather that the town has lost 220 people in the last week to the Hudson River virus. Jake tells Emily to tell Kenchy to prepare to inoculate the citizens of Jericho, and proceeds to instruct Dale on how to take back the vaccine, hinting to him how best to hijack a Jennings & Rall truck. Emily gets Kenchy to order 2000 syringes, which Goetz sees as suspicious immediately.
Heather complains to Beck about how the people in Fall River are not being taken care of. Beck tells her that his reports state that things are being handled. Heather stares him down and tells him that she doesn't care what his reports say because she knows for a fact that they're being left to fend for themselves. She tells him, "Those people need help. They're not getting it."
Trish, the Jennings & Rall administrator fluent in sign language, strikes up a friendship with Bonnie, telling her of the growing opportunities in the rapidly expanding city of Cheyenne, inviting her to come with her to check it out. Bonnie considers going there.
At the Richmond farm, Bonnie tells Stanley and Mimi about Trish's offer to go to Cheyenne. She says she is not going, joking that Stanley and Mimi are anxious to get rid of her so they can be alone. Stanley, who gave up a college football scholarship to stay home and raise her after the car accident that killed their parents, says he doesn't want to get rid of her, but if she wanted to go, she should go. He tells Bonnie he was already coming home before the accident. Later Bonnie confides to Mimi that she wants to go Cheyenne, and she'll make Mimi a list of "how to take care of Stanley." Mimi promises to "Follow it to the letter".
Soon the vaccines are re-acquired and Emily, Dale, Dale's men and Jake rendezvous at the warehouse to prepare to administer the medicine. Kenchy is late, and it turns out that he has been interrogated by Goetz and forced to tell about the location of the vaccine.
Emily and Dale manage to escape with the vaccine. Jake stays behind to run interference and enters an armed standoff with Goetz and his men. Before things get ugly, a message comes from Cheyenne for Goetz stating that all the vaccine has been accounted for and destroyed. The standoff ends and Jake and the Ravenwood team go their separate ways.
As the citizens are secretly inoculated, Jake tells Eric that the destruction order list was obviously tampered with to say that no vaccines were missing, as Jennings & Rall are very, very thorough with their inventory. Eric says he has an idea about who changed the order. Around the same time, Trish is seen in her office receiving a fax regarding the real vaccine inventory, which she immediately shreds.
While this is happening, Heather goes to see Beck. She has just heard on the ham radio that the infected town in Missouri has received a load of vaccines and medical personnel. Beck admits that, though he is a military man who follows orders, he is also a family man, and is sympathetic because he has a wife in Santa Fe who went missing after the attacks, and hopes "that whereever she is, some army Major is looking after her the way I try to look after the people under my charge."
After Beck gets the results of Sarah's fingerprint analysis, he asks Valente if Sara had ever worked for the federal government, after Hawkins claimed that she was a spy. After a flat refusal by Valente and a veiled threat to Beck's job, he officially accepts Hawkins' help. While looking through discarded faxes, Hawkins finds an otherwise meaningless document with a bunch of random numbers - a code. As this is a designated way of covert agents to exchange communication, he translates a sequence of numbers into a phone number, and calls expecting missing Agent Cheung. The man who picks up is not Cheung, but somebody who Hawkins doesn't know.
"I know who you are," the stranger says. "I know what you're trying to do. And I want to help."