Day Three: 9:00 AM -- 10:00 AM

Previously on 24: Brother Palmer told Palmer that CTU had snatched Spawnders, but had blown its cover in the process. Palmer refused to take orders from Saunders any more. Kiefer got Spawnders to call her dad, but he figured out that she was with Kiefer, and there was much threat-swapping. Kiefer and Special Agent Charlie Brown rode into position around Saunders's building while hanging out the side of an SUV, and I was the only person in the world who didn't think that looked cool. Kiefer used a bullhorn to tell Saunders he was out of time and out of options. Saunders called Soul Patch, threatening to have one of his guys maim or kill Bitchelle if Soul Patch didn't order the relocation of the agents covering one of Saunders's exits. Soul Patch ordered Agent Baker's team to the front of the building, and Saunders walked out onto a deserted street. The following takes place between 9:00 AM and 10:00 AM.

Outside the front entrance of Saunders's building, Kiefer has run out of patience. He issues a final warning through his bullhorn, scowls at the empty building for fifteen seconds, and tells Special Agent Charlie Brown, "Smoke him out." Charlie Brown relays the order, and agents fire canisters of tear gas through the windows. Somehow every projectile fired at this multi-story building lands in Saunders's former office. Kiefer orders the teams into the building to bring Saunders out, and they move in, led by a gas-masked Special Agent Charlie Brown. At that moment, Agent Baker and his guys come tearing around the corner. Kiefer roars Baker's name and wants to know what the hell he's doing there. I want to know how far Saunders has been able to stroll in the time it took five trained agents to travel halfway around the building at a dead run. Baker tells Kiefer what he was told, and Kiefer fumbles for his walkie-talkie and hails Special Agent Charlie Brown, who is already in Saunders's room but reports that they have yet to locate the man in question. Kiefer demands of Baker where his order to move came from, and Baker tells him it was Soul Patch. Kiefer orders Baker's team back from whence they came, and Baker dashes off, looking rather jaunty for a guy running that fast. Kiefer's got his cell phone out, and he's calling Soul Patch to give him as good a reaming as he has time for right now. Soul Patch fumbles an excuse about working off the information he had, and how someone on his team made a mistake. Potato Face, who happens to be in earshot, does a double-take at this. Kiefer: "That is an unacceptable mistakeif you can't run CTU, you'd better replace yourself with someone who can." He hangs up without waiting for a comeback. Kiefer again gets Special Agent Charlie Brown on the walkie-talkie, and learns that he's been through the entire building and Saunders isn't in it. Of course, we're seeing Charlie Brown through that annoying room divider made of vertical glass bars that I'm glad I'll never have to look at again, so he appears not to have moved since entering the place. Kiefer's enraged "Dammit!" echoes off the surrounding buildings.

At CTU, Potato Face is giving Soul Patch the bad news about Saunders's absence, not realizing that it isn't news to Soul Patch. "What was that you said about someone in your group making a mistake?" she adds accusatorily. Soul Patch pretends to confirm with Adam the Woman Hater that Saunders was in the building, and Adam further offers to pull up the satellite images to find out what went wrong. Soul Patch isn't about to let that happen, so he says he'll take care of it and orders Adam to help Potato Face instead. He walks away looking like he's experiencing no small degree of intestinal urgency while Potato Face and Adam watch in confusion. It's 9:04:46.

And here, I think, is where Soul Patch hits the point of no return. It would be hard for anyone to stand up in the face of real-time video of their spouse being threatened with torture and death, and it's hard to condemn him for his initial reaction, fueled by panic and helplessness. I'd probably do the same thing. Which is one of many, many reasons that I don't run a counter-terrorism unit with my wife as a subordinate. ["Although it's worth stating for the record that that would be one fun-ass counter-terrorism unit to work for. Anyway, please continue." -- Sars] But at this point, Soul Patch is thinking relatively clearly again, as demonstrated by the gymnastics he's about to go through for the hour trying to keep his ass out of a sling. This show has been hammering away all season at the theme of people making huge sacrifices for the greater good, from Kyle Singer to Poor Man's Angelina Jolie to Bitchelle's shooting of the James Woods-looking guy at Inn Fection to Chappelle to Kiefer himself risking his daughter in a hare-brained swap-op, and now we learn that Soul Patch isn't on board when it's his wife's safety on the line. Furthermore, he knows perfectly well that he's not doing the right thing, which I think is why he never tells anybody what's going on. Well, that's one reason, and the fact that he has completely ruled out sacrificing Bitchelle as an option while not trusting anyone else, even Kiefer, to do the same.

But enough editorializing on that. While I've been blathering, Soul Patch has gone off into a room by himself, pulled up the surveillance satellite images of Saunders leaving the building, and deleted them. I don't know whether to be more incredulous about how easy that was, or about how the angle on the satellite appeared to be from a nearby rooftop, instead of directly overhead as satellite images must be. We'll call it a tie. Soul Patch's phone rings. It's his new boss, Saunders, who's walking around in the open, having for some reason ditched the case he was carrying at the end of the last episode. Saunders wants to be sure that Soul Patch deleted the satellite images, having neglected to ask him to do so initially. I don't know why he cares; he made sure everyone knew he was in the building before he left, and the southwest exit was the one left unguarded, so I would think he'd be prepared to give CTU credit for figuring out he went southwest. Soul Patch just wants his wife back, but Saunders isn't finished; he wants his daughter back as well. Soul Patch tells him that he expects Spawnders to arrive at CTU in five minutes. As Saunders opens an unlocked metal grate to step into a yet another abandoned building (which can't be more than a couple blocks away from his hideout, as he's only been walking for seven minutes), he clarifies the current terms: if Spawnders is harmed or not released when Saunders orders it, Bitchelle dies. Soul Patch is just wrapping up the call when Adam rings through on another line with the news that Palmer is calling. It would be interesting to hear what would happen if Soul Patch conferenced them in together, but that's not going to happen.

When Palmer gets on the line, he sounds pretty pissed, but he manages to keep his temper and not fire Soul Patch on the spot, even when Soul Patch can't explain how they lost Saunders. Palmer just orders tight security on Spawnders when she arrives. He's such a wuss. Soul Patch is just wasting all that sweat on his forehead.

At Division, Palmer continues walking into a conference room, where Brother Palmer and Poor Man's Scott McClellan are watching a news report that tells them that Palmer's opponent in the election, Senator Keeler, has lost a couple of endorsements. Palmer asks why, and they offer their analysis that it's because of Keeler's response to Palmer dropping out of the night's debate. Brother Palmer remarks, "Now that the threat level has been raised to red, people realize that you weren't playing politics. He is." Which should prove nothing, as the President has, I believe, some say over this "threat level." Leaving aside the fact that it would be pretty hard for all this to happen literally overnight. Palmer breaks up the party, saying, "We don't have time to think about the election right now." Hey, Sparky, I believe you were thinking about it along with everyone else a second ago. He pulls Brother Palmer out of the room, leaving Poor Man's Scott McClellan looking nonplussed. Not that we've seen that guy looking plussed yet.

Back at Saunders's erstwhile base of operations, Special Agent Charlie Brown is on the phone with Adam, confirming that Saunders was in the building, and the only question is how he got out. When he gets off the phone, he tells Kiefer that "now CTU says they're having problems with the satellite." Kiefer leaves Baker and several teams in charge of the building -- apparently he didn't learn his lesson about that -- and he and Special Agent Charlie Brown saddle up and head back to CTU so Kiefer can be with Spawnders when her father calls back. It's 9:08:36. From the car, Kiefer calls Potato Face and asks her, "What are you working on?" She explains that she's undertaken the project of reorganizing CTU's procedural manuals and translating them into haiku. No, obviously she's looking for Saunders, in this case by analyzing his last call for clues. Kiefer tells her to call him if she finds anything and hangs up while she makes a "duh" face.

Meanwhile, the Team Spawn motorcade pulls up to CTU less than a half hour after leaving Santa Barbara. Which is impossible even without factoring in the world's longest wait at a railroad crossing. Agent Forrester gets out of the shotgun seat (hey, I didn't realize that was her last week) and tells Spawn that Kiefer and Special Agent Charlie Brown are on their way back sans Saunders. Spawnders reaction to the news that her father is still at large is difficult to read, as is almost everything this actress does, but she asks Spawn, "He knows you guys have me, right?" Spawn confirms it. Sure, her father's a terrorist, but if you're a person who needs things explained to you by Spawn, that's almost worse.

Inside the building, Soul Patch greets Forrester and directs Spawnders's party to a holding room, despite Forrester's information that she was supposed to be going to a "white room," whatever that is. Spawn assures Spawnders that she'll be fine and sends her on her way. Soul Patch asks Spawn how she's doing, and she says she's fine, but she's just as clueless about Saunders's escape as she is about everything. Soul Patch changes the subject and tells her that someone's on the way over to ask her some questions about the shooting of Jew 'Fro Xander Harris an hour and change ago. Spawn shares that she "heard the news about Bitchelle." Soul Patch tries to play it cool: "What news?" he says, unsmiling. "That she isn't infected," Spawn duhs. Soul Patch insincerely accepts her sincere congratulations and watches her walk into a conference room and sit down. Through the room's far wall, which of course is also made of glass, he sees Spawnders staring back at him. All these glass walls. I'm glad that when they rebuilt the place, they used the lessons they learned when somebody blew it up.

At another location that looks like it was also recently blown up but not rebuilt, two henchmen haul Bitchelle into an empty room and yank off the cloth hood that's covering her face. They don't seem too nervous about touching the clothes she was wearing the whole time she was at V-I-R-U-S ground zero. They leave her alone in a chair that they don't bother to secure her to, although her hands are still cuffed behind her back and her mouth has been duct-taped. She looks around in dismay. It's 9:11:12.

9:15:37. Soul Patch broods, Kiefer drives, Bitchelle enjoys her duct-tape facial, and Adam sits on the phone. Potato Face pulls up a strip of satellite footage on her screen, and looks none too happy at the conspicuous stretch of blank frames staring back out at her. She schleps over to Adam's station and interrupts his incredibly painful conversation with his terminally infected sister about the virus and suicide pills. Adam, understandably, would just as soon not talk to Potato Face right now -- even less than usual, in fact -- but she's insistent, and Adam tells his soon-to-be-dead sister that he'll have to call her back. He follows Potato Face back to her computer, and she shows him the missing frames. Adam is suddenly all business despite the tear streaks still on his face. They figure that the chances of Saunders's departure being contemporaneous with a random satellite glitch are pretty low, and Potato Face fears that Saunders has access to their systems. Well, not directly. Potato Face isn't ready to take her theory to Soul Patch yet; she wants Adam's help in confirming it. I don't know why Adam's screw-up (or "screw-up," as the case may be) from the last episode doesn't come up here, or why Potato Face went to Adam about this given her opinion of his current capacity, but if we don't go with it we'll never get out of here. "So if you could just do that and then you could call your sister back," Potato Face finishes. I suppose she's trying. Adam heads back to his computer, and they exchange a significant look across the CTU floor. I don't detect any unspoken lust in it at all.