Tonight on CBS NCIS: Sydney airs with an all-new Tuesday, October 28, 2025, season 3 episode 3 called, “Lost in Translation” and we have your weekly NCIS: Sydney recap below.
In tonight’s NCIS season 3 episode 3, “Lost in Translation” as per the CBS synopsis, “The team’s hunt for a high-value U.S. target accused of murdering an Australian soldier takes an unexpected turn when the suspect claims to have evidence of a war crime.”
So make sure to bookmark this spot and come back between 10:00 PM – 11:00 PM ET for our NCIS recap. While you wait for the recap make sure to check out all our NCIS recaps, spoilers, news & more, right here!
Tonight’s NCIS: Sydney Recap begins now – Refresh Page often to get the most current updates!
Blue was back at work. Since she left, things have changed at the office. Travis has taken over. He goes by the nickname Trigger. Blue’s lab has turned into his lab and it was like a robot threw up in there. Blue was disheartened to see it. She also has to jump through a few more loopholes before she can officially rejoin NCIS. She sorta lied on her previous application. It’s why AFP was asking her to fill out a physical form. They don’t want Blue to make up any more lies or hack the system to approve her new application. Blue has to be herself now.
Whoever that person might be.
Blue sitting this case out doesn’t she didn’t hear about it. Or help in small ways. NCIS was leading a joint investigation with AFDIS. The woman leading the investigation on AFDIS’s end was another Mackey. Sergeant Jasek looked like Mackey, dressed like Mackey, and sounded like Mackey. They both meant business as well. The joint investigation was about an Australian soldier that was killed in Australia by a suspected terrorist. The terrorist was Rashid Ramati. Ramati was working as an interpreter for Australian forces in Afghanistan when the ops went sideways.
It was believed that Ramati was in fact Taliban. He led the soldiers into a trap to kill them off. He then fled when the Americans and Australians began looking for him. There was an international warrant out for his arrest. Somehow he snuck into Australia. He arrived the same day that one of the survivors from the earlier ambushed was killed. It was considered too much of a coincidence. Everyone assumed that Ramati snuck into Australia to kill one of two men that remembered his betrayal.
Only that scenario didn’t match the evidence. There were signs that someone picked the lock. The window was also broken so which came first. Then the bruises on the victim were post-mortem. He was actually killed by an injection and the bruises was there to cover it up. Doc Roy found evidence that whatever toxin was used was undetectable. There was also one other sign that didn’t make sense. Warrant Officer Class Two Lachlan Yates paid for Ramati’s ticket to Sydney. The two have been in contact for months and Yates never reported it to higher authorities or even asked Ramati to turn himself.
There had to be more to the story. They later found Ramati was looking for the now sole survivor of the attack. With Yates gone that could only mean Sergeant Henry Ascott. Ascott was left temporary blind after the bomb went off. He was discharged from the military. He’s since fallen on hard times. He was living on the streets. Ramati was looking for him at the VA hospital and they couldn’t give out his information to just anyone. NCIS found Ramati. They arrested him. They questioned him and the narrative from five years ago was completely false.
Ramati never betrayed the men. He’s the one that saved Yates and Ascott. He pulled them from the rubble. He said that he wanted to report an American war crime. He claimed a man known as the Ghost killed those men back then. Ghost also killed witnesses and destroyed everything found at the scene with his team. Ramati claimed he took footage of what really happened with one of the fallen’s cameras. The video was saved on an SD card that he hid in Ascott’s jacket. It was sewed under the flap. It wouldn’t be caught at first glance and that’s why he needed to find Ascott.
Ascott living on the street didn’t help, but they eventually caught up to him. He knocked out DeShawn and could have broken Evie’s nose. Ascott calmed down once he knew they were friendly. Ascott didn’t remember much about the bombing. What he did recall was that the research after they came home. He found out that Ramati was a drug dealer. There was a lot of heroin in the house they hit. It was being run by a rival drug cartel back then. He thought Ramati set them up to take out a rival. And that his friends died over it.
Ascott believed a family brought him in. They saved him and Yates. The son sang a song for him whenever his nightmares got bad and, after surviving an assassination attempt, they were bad. Ramati sang that song. He knew it. He said it was his family that saved Ascott. He was telling the truth. He also used to be a drug dealer. He did that before he became an interpreter. He was worried that the locals might remember him from his previous occupation and so he hid from them. He never abandoned that team either. He stayed close by.
Living in Afghanistan was all about survival. He knew his previous occupation as well as the fact that he temporarily walked away didn’t look good. It gave him a creditability problem. He still went back to save as many men he could after the bomb went off. Ramati was the only one who knew about the family that saved Ascott. Ascott heard them everyday. Ramati only fled Afghanistan after everything because he was worried about the safety for said family. He hasn’t seen his wife or kids in five years because all of this took place in 2020.
Ramati said the Ghost has been hunting him ever since. He even shot him and left him for dead. The bullet was still in his shoulder. Doc removed it. It was from a gun that was released officially a year after the incident and privately released to special ops right around the time the attack occurred. It was all lining up. Ramati was telling the truth. The sad part was that Ascott sold the jacket to someone on eBay. The woman he sold it to was soon found tied up. She and Ramati gave the descriptions of the men that attacked them and it was the same man. It was the Ghost.
The Ghost was in Australia. They gave composites. Mackey and JD recognized him as the man they both saw Sergeant Jasek fighting with. She lied to them earlier. She claimed that was her boss. In truth, he was the man that abducted her daughter. Jasek fed him information about the case in return for him not blowing up her daughter. He left the little girl standing for hours on a motion sensitive bomb. They found Jasek. She was arrested and that wasn’t her biggest concern. Her concern was her daughter.
Trigger helped them deactivate the bomb under Rebecca Jesek’s feet. The little girl was saved. Mackey and JD went after the Ghost. He slashed a woman across her femoral artery. JD was forced to stay with her while Mackey went after a hitman by herself. They got into a gunfight. Mackey had no choice. She had to kill the Ghost. There was just one issue. No one was taking credit for him. Mackey’s boss tried asking questions and he found himself shut out of meetings in DC. The Ghost was a careful secret. One that the Pentagon nor the DOD needed to know about now that the ICC was involved.
The Ghost’s involvement meant everyone was trying to cover this up. Ramati’s name was cleared. He and his family were getting fast-tracked visas to the United States. And the Ghost’s cell phone revealed he was given a hit list.
There were three familiar faces on the hit list like Ramati, Yates, and Ascott but there was also Mackey’s picture showing she was somehow involved in what happened five years ago.
THE END