Renee is not thrilled about not being there to watch her dogs backs and protect them. She is going to have to trust this team that she doesn't know. She trusts her brother with her life but is not sure about the others.
Before the undercover operation, Horatio pulls Renee aside and reassures her the dogs will be in his field of vision the whole time. He knows how much she loves her canine partners and the length she will go to protect them.
Since Renee is still predominantly resigned to a walker and the bad guys still think that she is dead, going with the team is out of the question.
Renee is putting every ounce of trust that she has on a team of people that she has no reason to trust. The simple truth is that her brother trusts them, and that will have to be enough for her.
Horatio needs someone to go undercover as the seller. The only person to came to his mind was Jake Berkeley. Jake is Calleigh's ex-boyfriend and is an MDPD undercover cop who has worked with Horatio's team successfully on several occasions.
Horatio gets Jake's location from the Undercover Officers' boss, and the team does a mock raid on the location.
As soon as Jake sees it is Horatio, he has to get separated from his group and be taken back under arrest. This way, the people he is with will not know that he is undercover and therefore maintain his cover.
To do this, he takes a swing at Horatio. Luckily for Jake, H knows what he is trying to do and arrests him for assaulting a police officer. If Horatio didn't know what Jake was trying to do, Jake might have gotten shot.
Once at the precinct, Jake is free to talk. When Horatio fills him in on the job he has to do, Jake is all in. He knows Renee from his last undercover gig when he was helping her bust a drug gang smuggling cocaine.
Renee and Echo were working a joint undercover operation with VICE. Jake was the undercover officer planted deep in a drug cartel's network. Renee and Echo were the officers who busted Jake and the crew. In fact, Echo had saved Jake during the operation.
The cartel leader found out that Jake was a cop and was getting ready to execute him. When Echo and Renee bust in, the dog takes a chunk out of the cartel leader's arm. Jake feels that he owes Renee and Echo a great deal. He is more than willing to do whatever is needed to save her and her canine.
The job is simple since he just has to take the dogs to a warehouse and meet with the Serbian Mercenaries. Horatio will always be within eyesight of the dogs.
This is the only way to get the bad guys who are the actual people who had attempted to grab his sister. They were the ones who tortured her to get information on the dog's location.
With both Echo and Charlie within eyesight and Jake on com's, Horatio has all the exits in control. Tripp, with the help of his most trusted MDPD officers, has the entire perimeter in lockdown.
There is only one way in and out because Horatio is not going to put his sister Renee's canine partners Echo and Charlie at risk. Renee is living at Horatio's house while she recovers from her violent beating and attack. Horatio promises to call home as soon as the operation is complete, so she will not worry.
The Mercenaries drive up in a late model black Ford Bronco. When all four doors open and five people get out, Horatio is taken off guard. With two mercenaries already dead, it brings the total involved to seven.
Through the coms, Horatio tells the group of officers standing by to focus on the driver since he is probably the group's leader.
The entire team of Horatio's are waiting for Jake to receive the money, but before he hands the dogs over to the Serbs.
The instant that Jake has the money Horatio in his police issue hummer drive up with the lights on but the sirens off so the Serbs wouldn't hear them.
Stepping out of the Hummer, Horatio pulls out his Sig Sauer aiming it at the leader before telling him, "Put the weapon down and place your hands behind your head; don't move."
To his complete and total surprise, the Serbian Mercenaries all dropped their weapons and came in quietly.
Horatio is expecting them to get into a shootout. When they don't, he is able to breathe a sigh of relief as he calls his sister to tell her that they have taken the Serbian Mercenaries into custody without a single shot.
Simply having the mercenaries in custody doesn't mean that they will be willing and able to talk.
The leader of the group David Kolcheck is no stranger to Horatio and his team. When he sees that it is Horatio, he responds very cruelly to him. "Lieutenant Caine, to what do I owe the pleasure."
"We have evidence that connects you to the brutal attack and murder of an MDPD police officer," is how Horatio responded.
When David asks a very cold question to Horatio, it took all of his strength to remain calm and not lash out.
"What do you care about it, you would think that she was your actual family the way you are going on about her."
Without thinking, Horatio hears himself respond with, "She's my baby sister, you son of a bitch."
He doesn't mean for the information to slip, but it does, and there was no way to take it back.
"You killed my sister, and you are going to pay," David demands his lawyer, so all questions stopped.
Walking out of the interview room, Horatio realizes something very damning for David. "I never said the officer was a female. How would Kolcheck know the officer killed is a female?"
Horatio steps out of the room. He doesn't want to do anything that will jeopardize the case and get David Kolcheck released.
As Horatio and his team go over the evidence making sure to cross all the T's and dot all their I's, they realize that David's lawyer might be able to argue away some of the evidence but not all of it.
Ryan finds Renee's DNA on David's watch, and on the bottom of his boots. He walked through her blood at the secondary scene. A shell casing from the attack at her house is found embedded in his shoe tread.
His prints and blood are found on and in the gun. The gun that was found on the dead body at Renee's house.
The final piece of evidence is that the team found David Kolcheck attempting to buy the police dogs from an undercover police officer.
No matter how much it kills Horatio, he is willing to give Kolcheck a deal for the person who hired him to kill his sister as well as her canine partners.
Horatio is willing to take the lethal injection off the table since Kolcheck is facing the death penalty for killing a police officer.
Horatio never told Kolcheck that the cop he was being charged with was NOT Renee but rather a different cop from a few years before. David's DNA had matched DNA from a case that was closed when his subordinate confesses to the crime that Kolcheck had committed.
One of the mercenaries is very quick to turn on David Kolcheck. He had only been hired to help get information from Renee. Charles Canaan confesses to being the one who held the rope when they were interrogating Renee to get her to tell them where the dogs were. Charles and his identical twin were in charge of holding the rope.
Charles tells Horatio everything. "We first tried some Sodium Pentothal. She would give us vague answers to our questions. When we asked her where her canine partners were, she said, (they are somewhere safe). Asking again, we were told (they are locked up safe where they are supposed to be)."
"Getting nowhere with the drug, we attempted electrocution to get answers. She was tough and never gave in. I left, and my brother stayed since they were talking about killing her by beating her to death. I may be a hired hand, but I'm not a murderer."
When we tried to take her off the wire and attempt something else, she slipped and fell about 25 feet. I was quite scared that she was dead until I heard her moan in pain.
We then hung her by her wrists and attempted to get her to tell us where the dogs were. The price on her head was $500,000 dead or alive, but the price on the dog's heads were $1,000,000 each alive.
We wanted the two million for the dogs, not just half a million for her. Kolcheck never told us that she was a cop, but I never asked because I needed the money. I'm so sorry. If you need me to, I will testify, and you don't need to offer me a deal." This was a valuable weapon to keep in his back pocket for Horatio.