“Taken”

Alias season 3, episode 16
Original air date: March 21, 2004

Sark is in transport back from France, but the plane he's on lands not where it's supposed to — where Sydney and a team are waiting to pick him up — but in the middle of the desert 60 miles away. When Sydney gets there, she finds that all the crew members died when Sark opened the emergency door and jumped out mid-flight. Lauren, of course, assisted in this operation by leaking information to the Covenant about the CIA's plans.

Lauren's father is in town to meet with Jack and Dixon about Sark's mole in the CIA. Lauren is ordered to turn over everything she has about Sark to Jack, since he's heading the investigation. As they're meeting, though, Dixon discovers that his children never made it to school that morning. Sark calls on Dixon's daughter's cell phone to initiate negotiations for the return of his children: Dixon has to acquire the release of five Covenant operatives held by different governments within 48 hours.

Senator Reed is absolutely opposed to negotiating, though, because it is not U.S. policy to negotiate with terrorists. Sydney pushes, though, for working on the release of the prisoners while at the same time developing another strategy for rescuing Dixon's children. Marshall is able to pick up a phone call that Sark made on his cell phone before jumping from the plane and by pinpointing Covenant communications through Echelon and knowing where Sark jumped, Marshall is able to determine that Dixon's kids are being held at a warehouse in Nogales.

Dixon and Sydney head a team to raid the warehouse, but when they search the building, they find it wired with explosives. Marshall realizes that the film he's seeing on the closed circuit TV in the warehouse is on a loop and that Dixon's children are no longer in the building. Dixon is unwilling to believe that, though, and Sydney has to force him to leave the building before it explodes.

Jack asks Marshall for information about who accessed Sark's flight information leading up to his jump, and Marshall finds that someone logged on using Dr. Barnett's account. They tried to cover their tracks, but he finds that it originated in Switzerland. Lauren's done such a good job of covering her tracks that she's made it look like Sloane's the mole, and he's now completely scapegoated. Jack instantly goes to Zurich to arrest Sloane himself, and of course, no one believes him when he protests he's innocent. Dixon threatens him to find out where his children are being held, but Sloane won't budge. Sydney, again, has to pull Dixon back from the edge to keep him from killing Sloane.

When Dixon gets home that night, his son approaches him. He's been let go, but the Covenant has made further demands. They've demanded the immediate release of ten prisoners, now, or Dixon's daughter will be killed. Dixon steps down temporarily and names Jack as interim director. When Sydney visits Dixon at the hospital with his son, he discloses to her that the Covenant's real demands were that he obtain a Rambaldi device for them from Project Blackhole. They told him that if he told the CIA about their real demand, they would kill his daughter.

Dixon and Sydney infiltrate Project Blackhole; Dixon visits a friend of his there and while she's out of the room, he accesses their records to tell Sydney where in the building the artifact is. After a couple of tries, she tracks it down and recovers it: it's a golden box with "Irina" inscribed on it. Jack discovers from Sloane what Dixon is up to and goes to Dixon and Sydney with Sloane's information. Sloane told Jack that what was in that box, in the hands of the Covenant, would be deadly to Sydney. Jack insists that they duplicate the box and hand over a dummy to the Covenant, but Sydney and Dixon refuse, on the grounds that it would be too dangerous for Dixon's daughter. They can't afford for the Covenant to be suspicious about the box.

Senator Reed is notified by an aide that Dixon was at Project Blackhole, and he immediately calls for Dixon to be taken into custody. Lauren, who has been tasked by Sark with making sure that nothing interferes with the exchange, enlists Vaughn's help to help Dixon; they go to Marshall to get him to interfere with Reed's helicopters' GPS system, so that they go to the wrong site. Meanwhile, Jack, Dixon and Sydney are ready to make the exchange with Sark. Sark wants to place a collar with a syringe full of toxin around Dixon's daughter's neck, though, to ensure that he can get away. He assures them that it will be simple to remove, but that if they don't do it in the right timeframe (just enough for him to get away, but not too long), she'll be injected and killed. Jack and Dixon absolutely won't agree to this, but Sydney demands that Sark put the collar on her, since she chose this life and Dixon's daughter did not. Once Sark leaves, Jack is able to remove the collar, and they all go home.

Jack, however, learns back at the office that Sloane may not be the mole after all. He overhears Lauren say to Vaughn, "Not if I see you first, love," and it triggers something in his mind — he remembers that he heard Sark say that in his conversation on the cell phone from the plane just before he jumped.