In the 3rd episode of Countdown, Mark reunited with a friend he made during his time at the correctional facility in Palmdale, Timur, hoping that he could give him some pointers about Volchek, the Belarusian terrorist, and his plans to trigger a nuclear event in Los Angeles. So, Mark, along with Luke and Amber, orchestrated a fake prison van escape plan to get Timur and Mark out in the open and allow Timur to lead Mark to his uncle Mikhail’s den. Mikhail wasn’t too happy about Timur’s actions, because he was rightfully worried that he had led the police to him, and while he expressed his displeasure, Mark caught a brief glimpse of Volchek as well as whatever he was planning to do to the city. Since he was caught red-handed snooping around, Volchek ordered Mikhail to kill Mark. He barely managed to survive because of an explosion set off by Volchek, destroying all the evidence of his work, and the arrival of Nathan’s task force. This led to a gunfight. Volchek and Mikhail both got away, Timur was shot dead, and Damon ended up grievously injured. Well, did Damon survive the shootout? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Damon Is Dead
Episode 4 begins with the revelation that Damon is dead. The surgeons did everything they could to save him, but he’d lost too much blood, and nothing could be done about that. Nathan and Evan convey the information to Damon’s wife, Cora, who is understandably distraught. The LAPD, in their press release, addresses the explosion at Mikhail’s dance hall, but they don’t go into the specifics of the casualties so that their enemy has no clue about the damage they’ve done. Even Cora is asked to arrange the funeral services as quietly as possible to avoid attracting the attention of the terrorists. Back at the task force’s HQ, Nathan asks Mark if he remembers anything that he saw in the basement, and all he can come up with are a map of the LA port, some vague diagrams, and a name, Gallagher.
Nathan directs Mark to see if there’s any connection between Gallagher, Mikhail, and Volchek, while he himself deals with the LAPD’s decision to take their detectives off the task force after this little fiasco. That involves meeting up with DA Grayson and telling him that if he tries to play his petty politics in the middle of an active investigation, he’ll face Nathan’s wrath. We get some brief scenes of Volchek roughing up Mikhail for Timur’s mistake, and Mark expressing regret in front of Amber about his own recklessness before focusing on Evan’s revelation about Mikhail’s home address: 11421 Wrightwood Drive. Nathan orders Amber, Mark, Luke, and Keyonte to head over there in the hopes of nabbing Mikhail; unfortunately, all they get is Mikhail’s wife, Tatsiana. They bring her in for questioning, and after some customary beating around the bush, Mark and Amber get down to brass tacks and threaten her with deportation. So, she blurts out the details of the website Mikhail uses to communicate with Volchek and his people.
The task force uses that to set up a meeting between Mikhail and Tatsiana in Chinatown. It doesn’t take very long for Mikhail to figure out that it’s a setup, but before he can bolt, he is nabbed by the task force and taken to HQ for interrogation. Of course, Mikhail refuses to cooperate. So, they decide to bring in his cousin, Dmitry, so that he can be used as leverage, because Mikhail doesn’t want to confess about his connection to Volchek for the sake of his wife’s freedom and safety. Mark and Amber go to Downey to get ahold of Dmitry and force him to either talk about Mikhail’s operation or give them something they can use against Mikhail. He tells them about Mikhail’s daughter, Anya, who has been kept in such secrecy that even the task force has failed to find anything on her so far.
Mark and Amber want to use this information against Mikhail to crack him, and Nathan is perfectly okay with that. However, Evan intervenes, as she wants to do this section of the interview because she herself resembles Mikhail’s daughter, and she thinks it’ll hit him where it hurts. Given how this is one of the most contrived shows in existence, this tactic works out, and Mikhail tells Evan and Nathan everything about how Volchek contacted him, what he wanted from him, how he used Belarusian patriotism to win him over, and, roughly, what his plans are for the US. Mikhail needed the money that Volchek was offering; hence, he became Volchek’s partner-in-terrorism. To make up for his sins, at the end of Countdown episode 3, Mikhail arranges a meeting with Volchek so that the task force can arrest him. Volchek is obviously 10 steps ahead of them, and he foils the plans of everyone looking to thwart him. Nathan knows that this’ll hurt the team’s morale. Hence, he uses Damon’s death and Cora’s sentiments to keep everyone motivated.
The Hunt For Volchek
Episode 5 of Countdown has a bunch of flashbacks to Volchek’s work as a representative of a company called Blue Lion Foods in London in 2018, how it all went sideways, and how it affected his relationship with his wife. Since all that’s recapped by the show itself, I’m going to reserve all those details for the end of this section, because what’s the point of talking about the flashback sequences and then talking about it all over again when the show summarizes it? To be honest, I’m having an existential crisis at the time of writing this sentence because shows like these have rendered explainers redundant by doing rundowns of their own plot points during the episode itself. Real high-IQ stuff right here. Anyway, coming to the present-day stuff, Danill, Volchek’s henchman, informs Volchek that he has managed to retrieve the CCTV data that was being stored off-site by a company called Delphi Security. In doing so, he has not only protected Volchek’s identity but also obtained photographic proof of Mark’s presence in Mikhail’s lair. Volchek orders Danill to gather all the information that’s available on Mark. A little spoiler alert here: they don’t get anything because Evan had messed with the records of every individual on the task force, so that in case anyone tries to go through the database of all the law enforcement authorities where their names and faces are saved, the enemy will hit dead end after dead end.
Coming to the task force, Nathan gives a basic synopsis of the events that have transpired so far and then checks in on what his team members are doing on an individual level. Evan and Keyonte are looking for Gallagher, Amber and Mark are looking for forensic evidence from all the residences associated with Mikhail in case they get anything on Volchek from there, and Luke is looking into any Eastern European gang activity. Nathan dismisses them so that they can go back to their jobs. Mark and Amber choose to get into a bit of a tiff over the brick of heroin that the latter had nicked from Javi’s stash, but that’s cut short by Keyonte because the news about the attack on Delphi Security’s servers has just reached him. They don’t really find anything there, but they do realize that there are a lot of people working for Volchek, or else they wouldn’t have been able to pull off this heist.
Nathan has a hunch that the Belarusian General Consul (played by Pasha D. Lynchnikoff, who was really amazing in Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning) is in cahoots with Volchek, and he wants to meet him to see how he reacts when he brings up the terrorist’s name before him. Of course, he feigns ignorance, so the task force decides to infiltrate the Consul General’s party via the catering service called Pascal’s, get into his official computer system, extract every bit of data that’s available in there, and see if there’s any mention of Volchek in it. Amidst all this planning and plotting, Mark suffers from an episode of severe headaches caused by the brain cancer that’s slowly unraveling.
We also see Nathan meeting up with a powerful individual named Tim Carmichael to get DA Grayson off his tail, because Grayson’s need to hold Nathan accountable for his actions is proving to be a massive hurdle. Carmichael obliges Nathan by threatening to transfer Grayson from Los Angeles to Sacramento so that he can’t bother Nathan anymore. Therefore, Grayson has no option but to turn a blind eye towards whatever Nathan is doing. It’s pretty obvious that the show is trying to portray Grayson as the problem here, but any show or movie that tries to make a case for a law enforcer who doesn’t want to be held back by rules and regulations in the name of God and country and even portrays the idea of democracy as an issue is straight-up “copaganda.” Don’t fall for it; it’s nonsense. The law can’t be broken by criminals, and it shouldn’t be bent by lawmakers and law enforcers, period. A police state is not something to be proud of.
Volchek Is Vusovich
At the end of Countdown episode 5, Mark and Amber enter the Belarusian Consul General’s party as patrons. Luke pretends to be their driver. Evan is in the kitchen as a waiter. Keyonte is in a Pascal van, which is fitted with the latest tech to help his team members maneuver any kind of firewall or tech-based obstacle. And, last but not least, Nathan confronts the Consul General regarding his knowledge about Volchek with the aim of keeping him busy while the task force barges into his computer system. Of course they face a bunch of hiccups, with Mark even getting into a pretty brutal fight with the security guards, but Evan manages to extract all the data she needs from the Consul General’s PC at the nick of time. Conveniently enough, there’s an entire folder named Volchek in there, which, as mentioned earlier, has a detailed history of the man of the hour.
Volchek’s real name is Boris Vusovich. He was born in Minsk in 1979. He was an ordnance expert when he was in the Belarusian Ground Forces. That’s supposedly when he became an expert in explosives as well. He was discharged in 2006, after which he became a middle manager in the Belarusian Defence Ministry. In 2008, Boris’ brother, Anton, died by suicide. That’s when Boris went into the food services industry and joined Blue Lion Foods. He married Kira Butney (at least that’s what I heard without the aid of subtitles), who was a beauty queen, in 2018. She was 10 years younger than him (eww), and they had no kids. Now, in 2019, Boris was caught for embezzlement as he tried to extort a US businessman named Matt Woodley, who tried to outbid him during a seminar in London.
Woodley then worked with the Belarusian government to expose him, thereby forcing Boris and his wife to go on the run. The couple tried to flee the country via a private plane. However, the plane exploded with Boris and his wife supposedly on board. Yes, Boris’ wife died, but Boris faked his death by sending a decoy into the plane. The Belarusian government apparently knows that Boris has taken on the identity of Volchek and is roaming around in the USA with the aim of triggering a nuclear event. Nathan thinks that the task force is really close to nabbing Boris; they just have to keep their head in the game.
Unbeknownst to Nathan, Boris is, yet again, a few steps ahead of him, as he has supposedly made the Wilshire Federal Building his next target. I’m sure Boris doesn’t aim to pay Nathan a visit there; I think he is going to blow it up to send a message to the law enforcers of the city that he isn’t someone to be trifled with. I don’t know if Nathan is going to make it out of this situation alive, and if he dies, I guess the task force will have to answer to Grayson, which will undoubtedly be a crooked twist of fate. Well, those are just my thoughts on episodes 4 and 5 of Countdown. If you have any opinions on the same, please, feel free to share them in the comments section below.
