Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Nuclear Winner
By M. Giant | Season 6 | Episode 17 | Aired on 04.08.2007
It's 10:18:12 as a CTU SWAT van tools along an empty street. From the shotgun seat, Kiefer's on his cell phone with Buchanan, saying that they're about six to eight minutes away from CTU. This despite the fact that it took Doyle almost thirty minutes to get to where they were from CTU last hour. Must have been fighting a nasty headwind. "Tell Agent Burke we're going to need everything he's got," Kiefer says to Buchanan, loud enough for Fayed to hear, even though everything Agent Burke's got isn't worth all that much. From where he's sitting in the back with Fayed, Doyle asks what they'll do if it doesn't work: "I've never found pharmaceutical torture all that effective." Finally, a CTU employee who has the guts to use the dreaded "T-word" out loud. "I have," Kiefer tells the road ahead. Fayed tells them to quit trying to scare him, because he still won't tell them anything. Doyle creeps that at least he'll get to see Fayed suffer.
Kiefer suddenly remembers that it's his turn to be good cop again, so he turns around in his seat to tell Doyle to step off. Doyle points urgently out the windshield, where a gigantic armored car is on a collision course with them. The CTU driver swerves, but the van still clips the other vehicle. Quite a feat, considering that they're the only two vehicles in sight. The CTU van tips over on its side as the armored car screeches to a stop a short distance away. Clearly, this was not an accident (in more ways than one, but we'll get to that in a minute). Kiefer asks if everyone's okay, and Doyle answers in the affirmative. Kiefer watches through the cracked windshield as a small army of swarthy men sporting fatigues and assault rifles -- as well as kaffiyeh-like scarves worn as masks -- start piling out of the armored car to surround them. Kiefer offers to try to cover Doyle while he gets Fayed out of there. He kicks the windshield out and the firefight is on. Kiefer and Doyle manage to take a few bad guys down, but the unnamed CTU agent goes down almost immediately, as unnamed CTU agents so often do. Doyle is quick to follow, and soon even Kiefer is flat on the pavement. Are we supposed to think they're dead? Or that their bulletproof vests protect them from death but not from unconsciousness if struck by a body shot? It actually doesn't matter what we think, though; as we'll soon learn, the important thing is what Fayed thinks, as the gunmen grab him out of the back of the truck and bundle him into the back of their vehicle, yelling in Arabic the whole time. Moments later, the armored car with Fayed inside it is gone, leaving the bodies of Kiefer, Doyle, and an armored CTU agent scattered on the pavement around the wrecked van.