Episode Report Card M. Giant: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Thrilling Bureaucratic Intrigue!
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 16 | Aired on 04.02.2006
It's 10:53:13 as they make their way to a new position. Kiefer checks his screen again and frets, "Dammit, there's too many of them. We're running out of time." Basically, he has no choice but to send Wayne on a little mission: Wayne is to take out a guard at ground level so Kiefer can climb unseen to the roof and take out the sniper. Wayne starts to head out, but Kiefer yanks him back into their hiding spot, saying one of them's moving. And indeed, a guard comes into view, only to be felled by two more silenced rounds from Kiefer's gun. "Go," he hisses at Wayne. Wayne goes. Kiefer looks worried as he watches Wayne sneak off. Oh, come off it, Kiefer. You don't work for CTU either most of the time.
Over his earpiece, Chloe directs Wayne to his target. Wayne gets into position and hides behind a support just feet from a clueless guard, looking terrified. The guard steps into the open with his back to Wayne, who whips around and levels his gun, looking all bad-ass along the sights. For about ten minutes. It took him three tries today to have a gun on an actual bad guy, and now he freezes? Looks like someone's got himself a little deer fever. Finally the guard turns and spots Wayne, but before he can raise an alarm or his assault rifle, Wayne plugs him twice in the chest. Wayne looks down at the guard's body, thinking, Kiefer was right. It is different. Also, I want that gun. "Jack, it's all clear," he says, and I'd be a little more sympathetic to Wayne right now if he hadn't been the one to argue for Kiefer to kill Chappelle back when I got this gig.
Kiefer starts climbing. Moments later, he's right behind Bravo's sniper nest. Bravo reports via walkie-talkie that he hears a car approaching, and turns to investigate, passing right by where Kiefer was a moment ago when the camera panned through. But Kiefer's gone now, and the unsuspecting Bravo finishes reporting in to Henderson that the vehicle has a single, female occupant. Not that he can see that from up there. And then Kiefer jumps down right behind him and slashes his throat. Bravo, Bravo (what, I'm going to not say it?). Kiefer takes the dead guy's walkie-talkie and does something to it with the point of his knife so that when he says, "Woman is alone in the car," Henderson can barely understand it, let alone recognize Kiefer's voice. He looks a little suspicious as he makes Kiefer repeat the message. But signs four and five -- the pause in answering his call, and the suspicious sound of the transmission -- go the way of the previous three. Henderson must really want that evidence. Kiefer picks up the dropped sniper rifle and takes up Bravo's old position, observing Evelyn through the scope as she stops her car and gets out. Kiefer earpieces to Wayne to wait for his signal. "We need Henderson alive. Do not shoot to kill," he reminds Wayne. Only a one-in-three chance of that, I'd say.