Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | 399 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Nuclear Winner
By M. Giant | Season 6 | Episode 17 | Aired on 2007.04.09
A moment later, Buchanan's doing just that, with Nadia chiming in on the call to supply the specifics. Kiefer gets real worried, spends a moment watching FayedVision more closely, and demands Doyle's phone so he can call Jamal. Doyle warns, "If they're wrong, you could blow this." "If they're right, this is already over," Kiefer insists, and calls Jamal.
Jamal's phone rings at 10:43:34. He answers, and Kiefer quickly explains why he thinks Fayed might be on to them. There's no response, though, because the armored car has just entered a traffic tunnel. I suppose it's inevitable that of all the hundreds of cell phone conversations that take place on this show, occasionally one is going to get dropped. About every sixth season, give or take. The even worse news is that FayedVision has gone silent and snowy as well. Things are not looking good for Jamal right now. Monitoring from CTU, Chloe says over the comm. that the tunnel is only 120 yards long, and that the FayedMobile should have come through by now. Kiefer calls in the chopper and tells everyone to move in. He draws and cocks his weapon. As Doyle drives the pickup into the tunnel, they spot the armored car pulled over to one side about halfway through the tunnel. Doyle pulls up behind the armored car, and they approach with guns leveled. The back door is ajar, and everyone inside is dead -- except for Jamal, who nearly is; and Fayed, who is nowhere to be found. So it looks like Nadia's research came about ten seconds too late to do any good. Oh, well, points for trying. As CTUmobiles pull in to block off the north end of the tunnel and Kiefer tries to get the chopper pilot to say whether he saw anything leave, Kiefer spots an access door with a shot-up lock and figures that Fayed went that way for refuge. Hey, it worked for that dog in Independence Day. Kiefer carefully heads through in pursuit.
Kiefer finds himself in some kind of large utility space with pipes and shit everywhere, making for a very suspenseful lack of sightlines as he searches for Fayed. At 10:45:36, Kiefer follows a noise and stays hidden as he sees Fayed stealing a cell phone off the body of a sanitation worker he presumably just took down. Fayed dials the phone and says into it, "It's me. I'm on my way to you now." He climbs into the sanitation worker's garbage truck and starts it up. Still staying out of sight, Kiefer hurriedly creeps up behind the truck. With a grinding of gears, Fayed is on his way -- with Kiefer hanging from the undercarriage, hoping for no speed bumps along the way and wishing Fayed could have instead stolen a truck with a rear deck. As Fayed heads down the road, the camera zooms in to show us that that's really Kiefer under there, illuminated by the nifty ground-effect lighting that of course all city sanitation trucks boast. And then it gets unintentionally hilarious as Kiefer screams into his earpiece at top volume, "BILL, IT'S JACK! DO YOU COPY!!??!" Of course Buchanan copies nothing, because the truck's driveshaft is whirling madly just inches from Kiefer's face. He is so glad he shaved earlier. "DAMMIT!!!" he bellows. Buchanan assigns Morris to analyzing the call, and Chloe to replaying the satellite footage.