The Mile High Job

The Leverage team attempts to expose a conglomerate's cover-up of its toxic fertiliser, which has resulted in the death of a young girl. However, the CEO, Allen Haldeman, has put all the damning evidence on a plane bound for the Cayman Islands. The team races to catch the flight, but once airborne, they discover that the CEO's intentions are far more sinister, and to avenge one life, they will have to save their own.

## The Client

* Mark and Stacey Jameson, a couple whose daughter, Ashley, died because of the fertiliser that leaker into the water supply.

## The Mark

* Allen Haldeman, CEO of GenoGrow Industries

## Locations

* Los Angeles, California
	+ Leverage Headquarters
	+ GenoGrow Industries Headquarters

## The Con

Sophie, Nate, Parker, and Eliot break into GenoGrow. Sophie distracts the security at the front desk. Parker, Nate, and Eliot have to climb 30 flights of stairs and then blow up a key-card reader, as Hardison is missing. Hardison wakes up back at the office and gets some food. He puts on his earbud just in time to hear the team state that Haldeman's assets are on the Cayman flight #1209.

Hardison helps the team get out of the office and gets Nate and Sophie seats on the plane as Tom and Sarah Jane Baker. Eliot uses his U.S. Air Marshal badge and Parker steals a uniform from a flight attendant who is tricked into leaving the airport. Hardison is sent back into GenoGrow to look for any more information that the team might have missed in their hurry.

Marissa Devins (an accountant at GenoGrow) is on the plane, as she noticed discrepancies in the safety testing phase of GenoGrow's fertiliser. Another GenoGrow employee named Dan Erlick is also on the plane and has military experience.

Based on Eliot's experience, they assume Erlick has been sent to take care of Marissa, so Eliot knocks him out and locks him in a restroom.

Not long after, Hardison finds a stop-transfer of funds to Erlick, which means he is actually a target as well. Eliot says the way he would take care of someone of Erlick's background is "in-transit," by either his or Marissa's bags as a bomb.

Parker breaks into the cargo hold to search Erlick and Devin's bags, but finds them clear. Following Hardison's instructions, they find a device that has been tapped onto the electronics. Just as they begin to figure it out, it starts interfering with the navigation system.

Parker follows Hardison's instructions and, while he hacks the plane's navigation system, Nate and Eliot direct the pilots in the cockpit, who are able to regain control in enough time to make an emergency landing on a highway.

Marissa is encouraged to testify for the Jamesons' case against GenoGrow.

## Aliases

* Tom Baker (Nate)
* Michèle, Sarah Jane Baker (Sophie)
* Dave (Hardison)
* Unnamed Air Marshal (Eliot)
* Unnamed Flight Attendant (Parker)

## Episode Notes

* This episode was originally intended to be a "bottle show," which is an episode filmed largely on one set.

## Trivia

* As he prepares to board the flight, Nate chooses the name Tom Baker, the name of the actor who played the Fourth Doctor in the British TV series *Doctor Who*. Sophie's identity is Sarah Jane Baker, a play on Sarah Jane Smith, one of the Third and Fourth Doctor's best known companions. The other fake IDs Nate was carrying were Peter Davison (the actor who played the Fifth Doctor) and Sylvester McCoy (the actor who played the Seventh Doctor)
* The movie playing during the flight is one of *The Librarian* movies, produced by Electric Entertainment, which also makes *Leverage*. Christian Kane later played a character in the show *The Librarians*, which was a TV show based off of the movies.
* A goof for this episode is when Eliot fights Erlick the knife falls on the sink side, but when Eliot leaves it is not there. When Eliot returns, the knife is back on the sink side.
* Hardison's line "I love it when a plan comes together" is a favourite catchphrase of Col. John "Hannibal" Smith from the American TV series *The A-Team*.
* The highway bridge that the airplane lands on appears to be the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the longest bridge over water. It is located in Louisiana. Correction: they mention in the episode and it appears to be 7 mile bridge in The Florida Keys - which would make more sense on an eastern seaboard flight down to the Cayman Islands.
* Hardison talks about the release of the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, released November 2008.