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Poor Tony wakes up, and has to learn about Michelle's death all over again. In more relevant news, we find out the real reason McGill got his access card stolen: it seems his sister's Loser Boyfriend plans to sell it to the terrorists. Don't ask me where those folks met up. Kiefer goes to Henderson's house to try to find out more about what his old boss is up to, but he hits a dead end when he finds that only Mrs. H. is at home and hubby's been keeping her in the dark. CTU realizes that VladimirKo's target is a hospital, which launches Curtis into a race against time to prevent it. And FLOTUS is so pissed at Logan for abandoning her to her fate that she puts the moves on Aaron. At the hospital, Curtis finds the armed nerve gas canister just in time, and now the bad guys only have eighteen left. Kiefer still wants those other eighteen, though, greedy bastard that he is. So when Henderson gets home, the only way he can think of to get Henderson to talk is to shoot his wife in the leg. And even that doesn't work. This year's theme: Husbands Suck. Bierko's henchman gets McGill's key card, but instead of paying for it, he shoots both McSibling and her Loser Boyfriend in the head. See if they ever make a deal with him again. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
For a change, we're not starting out right where we left off last hour. Instead, Buchanan arrives at the CTU clinic, where apparently Tony woke up about ten minutes ago. Before he goes into Tony's room, the doctor -- Doctor Besson, the one from last season, not the dead one from earlier today -- warns Buchanan that with the head trauma and all, Tony doesn't seem to remember that Michelle is dead. Buchanan wants to tell Tony right away, but the doctor nixes that so as to maximize the potential drama. Or perhaps because Tony isn't yet stable enough to receive the news, which will cause the traumatized remains of his brain to melt and leak out his ears. Buchanan agrees. What the hell, why not continue being the one getting sympathy from people over Michelle's death?
Inside the room, Buchanan leans over Tony's bed and his giant face bandage to ask how he's doing. Tony says he was told that Michelle was taken to Cedars-Sinai, and Buchanan confirms it, lying like someone who was never a field operative in his life (which, as far as I know, he wasn't). Tony wants to know what's going on, and Buchanan gives him a quick summary: Palmer was the main target, Kiefer was set up to take the fall, but now Kiefer is working provisionally with CTU. Tony wants to talk to Kiefer ASAP, and further asks Buchanan to get a message to Michelle that he's all right. Buchanan agrees to both, just barely managing to maintain the presence of mind to not pull out a Ouija board on the spot. Yes, I know I used that joke last week. Don't care. "We need you to get better," Buchanan whispers, with a hand on Tony's shoulder. He totally knows Buchanan's lying. Everyone knows Tony always gets better whether anyone needs him to or not.
It's still the aftermath of the motorcade attack in downtown L.A. FLOTUS stands by herself, watching President Suvarov embrace his wife in PTSD fellowship. Aaron limps over to her to tell her that a Navy helicopter is on its way to take them all back to Not Camp David. Aw, maybe the Suvarovs just wanted to ride in a helicopter again. Now that the immediate danger has passed, weepy FLOTUS thinks this is a good time to spill what she knows to Aaron: "Charles...knew about the attack and he just let it happen, Aaron...he gave the terrorists the Suvarovs' motorcade route." Aaron is sympathetically skeptical, but the arrival of the aforementioned helicopter puts a noisy end to the conversation before it can be explored further. Maybe they can talk about it with the Suvarovs on the flight back.
At Bierko's bunker, he's got a couple of guys soldering away at nerve gas canisters at 5:05:46. Not a gas mask in sight, of course. Bierko talks to one of these guys, telling him to "place the canister to maximize casualties. It must look as if this is one of our primary targets." Bierko then calls up Fucked-up Accent Guy, who says he's on his way to pick up the key card. Bierko warns him that he's using up one of the canisters to "create this diversion," but it's worthless without the keycard. Did he say "keycard"? Is that the keycard I think it is? Fucked-up Accent Guy utters his phonetically tortured assurances and hangs up.
And yes, it is the keycard I think it is. In fact, said keycard is currently being used by McGill's sister's Loser Boyfriend to arrange lines of coke on a mirror. Loser Boyfriend's cell phone rings, and the caller turns out to be Fucked-up Accent Guy, of all people. Apparently Loser Boyfriend had made some sort of deal to sell McGill's keycard to the terrorists. And they met up in the first place…how? I don't know, I guess we'll just have to assume that Friendster has a dark side. McSibling acts all twitchy about the coke, and Loser Boyfriend assures her that she'll soon be able to buy all she wants. So we're talking Elvis money? Because I don't think even he ever bought all he wanted.
At Not Camp David, Logan is acting all "poor me" to Novick about what he's supposed to say to his wife now. Naturally, he's filled with regret over his poor handling of the situation. I will give Logan credit; when he fucks up, he at least has the grace to beat himself up over it afterwards. But Novick gets up in his face and tells him, "Due respect, you don't have time for self-recrimination." He reminds Logan that the terrorists are going to be using the nerve gas soon, and they have to prepare. Logan asks how CTU is doing with the search for the gas, and Novick doesn't have much to tell him. So...are they done preparing, then?
At CTU, Curtis alerts Buchanan that the dead terrorists from the motorcade attack are on their way there, and that he'll meet the corpses in the morgue. Kiefer calls in, and after getting a quick update on the restored chain of command at CTU, gets put on speaker by Audrey. From the bustling crime scene that is the exterior of Omicron headquarters, Kiefer reports his conclusion that Henderson set up the deal for the terrorists to get the nerve gas. The good news is that Henderson's attempt to blow up Kiefer failed, but there's more bad news in the sense that all of the Sentox project's servers were destroyed and Henderson escaped. Kiefer asks Chloe to try and hack into Henderson's office computer. The proactive little cuss already has, and she tells him that although Henderson's hard drive was wiped five minutes ago (by remote control, apparently, because Henderson was in his car then), it's still transmitting data to some other location off-site. Kiefer asks her where, and he immediately recognizes the address she provides as Henderson's house. Buchanan offers to send a tactical team over, but Kiefer shuts that down, saying Henderson will see them coming. But since Henderson believes Kiefer dead, Kiefer will be able to "walk up to his front door" undetected. And, I presume, eat his food, and use his computer, and fuck his wife, all while Henderson stands there going, "Wow, I never believed in ghosts until today." Buchanan gives Kiefer the okay, and Kiefer climbs into the CTUmobile that he's still going to have to give back to Curtis at some point.
From his car, Henderson calls a Brazilian bank and asks for after-hours access to his personal safety deposit box. Unless this Brazilian bank has a Los Angeles branch, it's going to be way after hours.
At 5:09:44, in the CTU morgue, Curtis has already found something on one of the terrorists from the motorcade attack: it looks like a schematic of a building ventilation system. As it gets scanned into the system, Curtis is updating Buchanan on this new find. But they have two problems: one, they don't know what building it is, so they're going to have to look for a match; and two, the number 18:00, as in eighteen hundred hours, is written on the page. "That means the attack could happen within the hour," Buchanan points out. I have problems as well: not only did Bierko have a backup plan in place in case the attack on the Suvarovs failed, but he gave one of his terrorists a vital clue? To an attack that would only happen if the Suvarovs lived and his guys died, in which case the clue would be found? That seems...stupid. But then it's a diversion, so maybe that was his plan all along. Out on the floor, Buchanan passes along this latest bit of news to Chloe and Edgar, and says the schematics are on the way to their screens so they can start searching databases for a match. The building's "big enough to hold several thousand people," Buchanan says Curtis told him, even though Curtis said no such thing. Either way, they'd better make it quick.
In the clinic, Tony is still fishing for clues about Michelle's fate, but all Dr. Besson will give him is a look at his back as he scampers out of there. Smooth, Doc. No sooner is Besson gone than Tony pulls out the oxygen tube in his nose and the IV in his hand, then hops up from the bed. All better! He limps over to the tiny window and peeks out. While he waits for the coast to clear, he finds a nearby mirror and gingerly peels the giant bandage from the side of his face. All that's there is a fresh case of road rash, but then Tony has always been able to heal faster than an Alzarian (last time I'll do that, I promise. This week). Tony leaves the room. He quickly finds himself at what passes for a nurses' station at the CTU clinic, and starts typing on the keyboard of the abandoned computer terminal. All he enters is Michelle's name, and the computer starts thinking. While that's happening, Buchanan and Dr. Besson enter, see what's happening, and try to steer Tony back to bed. But Tony pushes them away with the strength of a man who was blown up thirteen hours ago instead of eleven. And then he sees, in big red letters, the word "DECEASED" filling the computer screen. Buchanan tries his hand at getting Tony away from the computer, but it isn't done yet; it also wants to show Tony photographs of their burning car, and of his wife's charred body splayed out on their front yard. I love how all the computers on this show run on the TMI operating system. Besson and Buchanan catch Tony as he collapses, and this time he lets himself be hauled back to his bed. I bet he's feeling pretty rooked right about now; he risked everything to save Michelle's life just three years ago, and for a lot of that time he was either in prison or separated. Poor sucker. It's 5:12:34.
5:17:02. At Not Camp David, the second Suvarov-bearing helicopter of the day comes in for a landing in a corral. Logan watches nervously from a safe distance -- safe from the helicopter blades, not from his wife -- as Aaron and his head bandage clamber out. Aaron offers a hand to FLOTUS, who follows, wrapped in a blanket. The Suvarovs are right behind them. Logan goes to meet his wife as she walks from the helicopter. "Don't touch me," she hisses at him. Logan tries to make his excuses, but she tells him in a quiet but damning tone, "You didn't stand up to them. You should have stood up to them." Logan has no choice but to let FLOTUS walk on. Because what's he going to do, stand up to her now?
And then he has to face the Suvarovs, who at least don't know his part in all of this (yet). "It was awful," Mrs. Suvarov Russians at him. Logan spouts some platitudes at their unimpressed faces, and Suvarov dismisses his wife in Russian for a private conversation with his American counterpart. And he looks pissed. "We both know who is responsible for this," Suvarov snaps. Logan agrees that it's the terrorists behind the Ontario Airport attack of that morning (which seems like a month and a half ago by now), even though "we thought they were all killed in the siege." "Obviously you were wrong," Suvarov bitches. Logan decides he needs to let Suvarov in on a secret. Not the big one, but a relatively little one, which is that the terrorists have nerve gas that they're threatening to use in L.A. Suvarov wants to know how long Logan has known this. "We just found out about it," Logan exaggerates. But he wants to make sure that Suvarov holds up his end of the new anti-terrorism treaty. That's rich; not only did he blow off the treaty by letting Suvarov get attacked, he's blowing it off right now by withholding information. Logan's asking for any intelligence that Suvarov's people have on the separatists. "You will have our help," Suvarov says, like he really wants to punch Logan in the nose. But he's not done talking. Suvarov wants to know why FLOTUS was acting so sketchy in the limo, even before the attack. Logan looks over to where FLOTUS is boarding a Secret Service SVU, safely out of earshot, and the background music gives him a little "crazy lady" violin cue to tell him how to get out of this one. And then he sells out his wife again, telling Suvarov that she "suffers from depression and anxiety. It's been very difficult for both of us." Suvarov's kicked-in face softens as he says that he's sorry to hear it. But Logan hasn't even finished saying "Thank you" before the Russian abruptly walks away and leaves him standing there. Something tells me -- and probably Logan -- that Suvarov doesn't plan to let this lie. No pun intended.
It's 5:20:10 in McGill's holding room at CTU when Buchanan comes in for a visit. He's really making the rounds this hour, isn't he? McGill, looking pale, asks how long he has to stay, and Buchanan says, "You're not going out there any time today." McGill isn't pissed any more; in fact, he's rather contrite as he asks Buchanan to let him call his sister: "She's in a little bit of trouble and I'm the only one who can help her." Buchanan looks at McGill and magnanimously tells the Redshirted guard to give McGill a phone and some privacy.
The phone at McSibling's apartment rings, and she picks it up to hear McGill asking for his CTU keycard back once again, even offering to let her keep everything else from his wallet. She asks if he can't just get a new one like she did when she lost the key to her laundry room. Looking at McSibling, I'm having trouble believing she's ever seen a laundry room. McGill isn't as amused as I am. He threatens to call the police, so she agrees to return the keycard today. She hangs up, just as Loser Boyfriend comes in, swigging from a bottle of Bud. She asks him where the keycard is, saying she wants to give it back. Loser Boyfriend says the keycard is how he plans to get the money he's been talking about. "You said we were just going to take his cash and a credit card," McSibling whines. "Twenty-thousand-dollar line of credit, right here," Loser Boyfriend sneers, holding up McGill's keycard. "Who's going to pay you that kind of money?" McSibling demands, cueing a split-screen window of Fucked-up Accent Guy driving there right now. Don't forget to stop at the ATM, dudesky.
Logan's now inside the building at Not Camp David, and he's got his "determined" face on as he stomps towards his wife's suite. I think it's 5:22:33, but I can't tell for sure because on the day this was aired, Kirby Puckett died, which in this town is like the Pope and an ex-president combined, and the clock on my Fox affiliate's broadcast is obscured by a crawl that's been repeating the news all hour. Logan tries to charge right through the door, but he's cut off by Evelyn, who tells him that FLOTUS has ordered her to admit no one, and Logan in particular. Logan backs down. And yet FLOTUS expected him to stand up to terrorists, when he can't even impose his will on a minor underling? Once the prez is gone, FLOTUS thanks Evelyn and instructs her to find Aaron. "Tell him I'd like to see him," she says. Ooh, I just bet she would.
Edgar's managed to find a match for the building whose schematic Curtis found on the dead terrorist. Chloe comes over to confirm it. That sound you hear when she tells Edgar, "You're right," is fourteen million pitchers of beer being chugged nationwide. She calls over to Buchanan, and they quickly inform him that the building in question is the fictional Tyler Memorial Hospital in Westwood, as opposed to the real one in Pennsylvania. Buchanan tells them to send Curtis over there with a tactical team, and picks up a phone to call the hospital.
But one of Bierko's guys -- the very same one who was tinkering with the canister in the bunker, in fact -- is already there, in a maintenance closet, standing over the body of the orderly whose uniform he's apparently just stolen. The terrorist takes a nerve gas canister out of a backpack and puts it into the storage compartment in the bottom of an empty gurney. And then he wheels the gurney out into the busy hallway, completely unnoticed in his medical camouflage. It's 5:24:36.
Commercials would normally go here, but my local Fox affiliate's news team would like to inform me that Kirby Puckett is still dead.
5:29:02. Kiefer's on foot in Henderson's neighborhood. And look, the man-purse is back! I haven't seen that thing since he handed it over to the Secret Service at Not Camp David five hours ago. I was beginning to think they'd never given it back. How it ended up in Curtis's car, however, will remain a mystery for now. Sotto voce, he calls in to CTU on his hands-free cell phone, thinking he's just giving an update on his progress. But Audrey quickly steals his thunder by loudly informing him that there's going to be an attack at Tyler Memorial within the hour. Kiefer copies that, but he's still got his own thing to work on, so he continues narrating his approach to Chez Henderson. He uses his knife to lift the latch to the back gate and finds himself in Henderson's back yard, which is almost as big as his secretary's office. Staying close to the fence, Kiefer peers towards the kitchen window and spots Henderson's wife, Miriam. This somehow tells Kiefer that Henderson isn't here, I guess because Henderson is always making sweet love on his wife every moment he's home. Kiefer signs off, saying he'll call back as soon as he accesses Henderson's computer.
Curtis is already with his tactical team in the back of a CTU SWAT van on its way to the hospital. He's also on the phone to the hospital's Chief of Security, a guy named Wegman, who has apparently already been briefed. At 5:30:20, Curtis tells Wegman to seal off the sub-basement to deny the terrorists access to the ventilation units. Curtis asks how long the hospital's evacuation will take; Wegman tells him that what with the 600 patients, many of whom can't leave under their own steam, it's going to be an hour or two. Curtis says they don't have much time, and tells Wegman to do whatever he needs to do to clear the place out in a half hour or less. Wegman hangs up and stands there, watching the evacuation flow past him and wondering how he might go about tipping the entire hospital up on its side.
Mrs. Henderson is being played by JoBeth Williams, who looks pretty good for someone who's pushing sixty. She's busy in the kitchen when Kiefer menaces into view in the doorway behind her and murmurs, "Hello, Miriam." Startled, she turns and gives a pretty convincing reading of, "My God! We thought you were dead!" I assume she means as of a year and a half ago, not as of a half hour ago. Because that would be kind of a giveaway. Kiefer isn't interested in pleasantries, though, and he asks where her husband is. Miriam starts looking worried when she spots the gun in Kiefer's hand, although it's not leveled at her yet and she's the one who knows where all the sharp knives are. Kiefer's being all quiet and dangerous, and not at all responsive to Miriam's entreaties to tell her what's going on. And relations don't exactly improve when he finally raises his gun at her face and demands to be shown to Henderson's computer. Miriam still isn't saying anything, so Kiefer tells her all about Henderson's deal to help the terrorists acquire nerve gas. Miriam denies the very possibility, until Kiefer tells her that Henderson "tried to kill me less than an hour ago." For some reason, that's the line that causes Miriam to break her eye-lock with Kiefer and steal a glance toward the room, where the family computer is set up on a desk in plain view. Why just look for yourself when you can intimidate your hostess, after all? Kiefer shepherds her in that direction at 5:32:20 and tells her to park it on the living room couch. She obeys, saying that he doesn't need the gun. "You're not going to shoot me," she errs. But for now, Kiefer holsters his gun, unslings his man-purse, and heads right over to the computer, which is on a desk right there in the living room. This house must be smaller than I thought. As he starts tapping away, he says, "Chloe, it's Jack," which is apparently enough to initiate a phone call. Why don't they just give up and start making him wear a Star Trek communicator pin all the time? He tells Chloe that he's going to need her help getting into Henderson's hard drive. Uh, try starting with "My Documents," Kiefer. Not everything has to be so hard all the time.
Aaron comes to see FLOTUS, just as requested. Looks like he's back on duty, because there's that familiar wire coming out of his ear. I was under the impression that Secret Service agents who save their subjects and almost get blown up in the line of duty would at least get a dinner break afterward. The two of them are alone in her suite as she thanks him for saving her life. "Well, you're welcome," Aaron says blandly, rather than complaining about her putting his life in danger by not warning him about the attack she knew was coming. But FLOTUS has more to say: "The country's lucky to have men like you. I'm lucky. I hope you'll allow me to say that." That looks like a fairly innocuous line as written, but FLOTUS somehow manages to infuse it with weapons-grade sex-voodoo. Aaron looks like he'd allow her to do just about anything right about now. Except kiss him on the lips, and that's only because he doesn't have any. And then a deep voice from the doorway softly says, "Mrs. Logan." Aaron jerks his hand away like she's even hotter than she is as Novick enters, dismissing Aaron and saying that Logan wants to talk to her. FLOTUS reiterates that she isn't interested, and when Novick offers to convey as much to Logan, she flatly says, "You can convey whatever you want, Mike." Novick conveys his detached testicles right on out of there.
Aaron's waiting out in the hallway for Novick, looking more flustered than I think I've ever seen him. Including when a guy with a flamethrower was trying to kill him. Novick tries to blow right past, but Aaron wants to assure him that nothing happened. "Whatever didn't happen," Novick grits, "make sure it doesn't happen again." Aaron's left standing there, wondering if there's any way to interpret that line that would justify his going back into the FLOTUSuite and getting him some.
The hospital evacuation continues at 5:35:02. Curtis arrives with his men, and quickly meets up with Wegman in the parking lot. The security chief reports that all access points to the sub-basement have been sealed off, but they've still got twenty-six ICU patients, including seven newborns, who can't be moved. Curtis acknowledges the news, and starts giving orders to his armored agents, who fan out into the hospital against the tide of evacuating patients and staff.
Two of them go right by the bad guy disguised as an orderly, who pushes his gurney of mass destruction into a quiet hallway to call Bierko. He reports that CTU must have somehow gotten tipped off to their plans, because the hospital is being evacuated and he can't get to the basement. Bierko orders his men to bring up their schematics of the hospital, and quickly finds an alternate route. "Viktor," Bierko says, "I need you to finish this task. Even if it means you don't get out." Viktor swallows hard and promises to take care of it. I hope he's getting paid a lot. It's 5:37:02.
5:41:32. Suvarov must have been as good as his word, because CTU's been briefed by Russian intelligence, and they now have the name Vladimir Bierko. Although Audrey pronounces it "Byairko," which makes my "VladimirKo" neologism a bit less catchy. Don't care. Logan and Novick are listening in on the CTU meeting from Not Camp David as Audrey says that Russian intelligence thinks Bierko is directing the attacks, based on some messages they intercepted and the fact that Bierko disappeared from Russia three months ago. Buchanan adds that all agencies have an APB out on Bierko as of now. Logan asks if there's a chance that they'll find Bierko before the hospital attack. Buchanan says they're working on it, and tells Logan what Kiefer's up to. "Let's hope he succeeds, Bill," Logan says. "The country's already suffered three devastating attacks today. We need to stop this madman." Buchanan hangs up, glad and perhaps a little amazed that Logan didn't just yell at him for no reason.
It's 5:42:35 as Kiefer continues to sit at Henderson's home computer, and it looks like Chloe is patched into Henderson's system remotely. He's berating Chloe for not finding anything more incriminating than some downloaded music. Hey, don't knock it, Kiefer; I bet the RIAA would lean on Henderson pretty hard. Still sitting on the sofa across the room, Miriam takes advantage of this opening to reiterate that Henderson is innocent, just like he was when Kiefer forced him out of CTU. Kiefer impatiently reminds her that Henderson tried to kill him. She says she was sure her husband was defending himself. Kiefer: "He blew up the server room at Omicron while I was still inside." Miriam's face falls as she realizes that what Kiefer's describing doesn't exactly sound like a "him or me" scenario. But Kiefer can't stop when he's ahead, and he insists that Henderson was trying to destroy evidence of his involvement in the conspiracy. "Why do you hate him so much?" Miriam asks, like she's already forgotten about that whole "tried to kill me" thing. She claims that Henderson never hated Kiefer, and even checked on Spawn when everyone thought Kiefer was dead. Yeah, I bet he did. If by "checked on" you mean "checked out." Before that can go any further, Chloe cuts in to say she's found a "shadow drive" that for some reason contains records of every satellite phone call Henderson has made in the past year. Kiefer wants to her to start cross-referencing to the numbers that they know terrorists have been using today, but the access she needs is password-protected. Kiefer asks Miriam what the password might be, but she has no idea. Kiefer clearly thinks about forcing the issue, but decides that the fastest way to get into the shadow drive is to have Chloe get her hack on.
5:44:25. Wegman finds Curtis, and shows him something a hospital guard brought to his attention. It's one of those magic data pads that I thought only CTU used, but it's displaying footage of Viktor the fake orderly. This is significant because (a) nobody recognizes the orderly, (b) no orderlies should be in the sub-basement anyway, and (c) the footage is from five minutes ago. Curtis immediately starts barking commands into his headset, ordering, among other things, a soft perimeter (like CTU has any other kind). Curtis makes sure that CTU home base is on the call, and tells Edgar to run the fake orderly's picture through their facial recognition software to try and get a match. Edgar's on it, and Curtis heads to the basement.
Back at CTU, it's only a matter of seconds before Edgar finds a match from the surveillance footage of Viktor the fake orderly. Buchanan passes along the info to Curtis, and Viktor's Russian nationality and record of "drug smuggling and weapons trafficking" satisfies everyone that he's a bad guy. Hey, whatever happened to "innocent until proven in possession of a Thermos of Death?"
And he's also a busy guy. We see him taking his nerve gas canister out of the gurney's storage compartment and setting it on top, right below a giant air intake. He fiddles with some wires trailing out of the canister, and sets the LED timer on the side to start counting down from ten minutes. He then removes the ticking LED display like a detachable car stereo face. Wouldn't want anyone to steal it.
Curtis and a bunch of guys are stealthily stalking the basement. Or at least they're stealthy until Viktor runs by. Then there's a lot of yelling. Curtis tries to take him alive, but has to shoot to kill when Viktor turns a gun on him. Curtis takes Viktor's gun and satisfies himself that the man is dead, but he doesn't get any further before one of his agents calls him away. Curtis follows, ordering another agent to search Viktor's corpse.
On their way into the room where Viktor set up the canister, Curtis and the other agents don full-face gas masks. And then they find the canister, blinking and beeping away. They stare at it in awed silence for a moment, until one of the agents reaches for it. Sharply warning that the canister might be set to go off if it's moved, Curtis orders the chemical response team to get their moon-suited asses down the basement, adding that the canister has been located and is armed. So it's a good news/bad news kind of thing. It's 5:47:36.
5:52:03. The evacuation of the hospital is still going pretty slowly, and even the entry of a bunch of guys in full hazmat suits doesn't seem to build a fire under anyone. Idiots. Curtis reports back to CTU that the hospital still isn't completely evacuated. Don't ask me what he was doing for the five minutes. Buchanan copies that, and tells Edgar to have LAPD order a complete evacuation of downtown. Which, as far as I can tell later, doesn't ever actually happen. But whatever.
Nearby, Chloe reports to Kiefer that Henderson's shadow drive is so well-protected, all she's been able to accomplish in the way of cracking it is figuring that it's going to take a half a day to crack. Well, this'll be a dull slog to the season finale, then. Except that Henderson's car is now pulling up in front of the house. I don't have a problem with Kiefer having beaten Henderson home, because we know that Henderson stopped off for an errand on the way. Kiefer notes Henderson's arrival and gets up from the computer as Chloe updates him on the situation at the hospital. Kiefer tells her to stay focused on the eighteen canisters that are still unaccounted for, and asks if more bodies would help her access Henderson's hard drive faster. Chloe yells that she's already got three people on it. Kiefer doesn't respond, because he's hidden himself away somewhere near the front entrance. Henderson comes in, carrying a briefcase, and urgently tells Miriam to start packing. Which reminds me of a joke, and here it is:
She: Honey, start packing! I just won the lottery!
He: Really? Where are we going? The beach? The mountains?
She: I don't care, just get the hell out!
Sadly, that doesn't happen here. Henderson quickly realizes from the expression on his wife's face that something's wrong, but before he can do more than register this, Kiefer hops out behind him and pistol-whips him to the floor. It's 5:53:46 as Kiefer forces Henderson at gunpoint to get on his knees, handcuff himself behind his back, and join his wife on the sofa. Kiefer demands to know where the nerve gas is, and doesn't put up with too much of Henderson's denials before he presses the muzzle of his gun right up against Henderson's knee. Henderson awesomely says, "That's right, Jack. Start with the knee, just like I taught you. The sooner you do it, the sooner you'll see I don't know what you're talking about!" Kiefer moves the gun to Henderson's neck and tells him about the gas at the hospital. "People are going to start dying!" he roars. "Start"? Henderson's still not talking, and Miriam begs Kiefer to leave her husband alone, since he obviously doesn't know anything. Kiefer's eyes light on the briefcase Henderson carried in, which he dropped when Kiefer poleaxed him. Kiefer carries it over to the coffee table, sweeping aside the chessboard that's set up there. It's kind of an unconscious symbol of the amount of finesse that's usually involved in a Kiefer investigation.
Kiefer makes Miriam unlock the case, and he turns it back towards himself before opening it. Surprisingly, it fails to blow up in his face. Oh, Henderson, you had so much potential. Kiefer sets aside the gun that's inside and picks up the case, dumping out the bundles of cash packed tightly within. Errand, remember? Miriam is genuinely shocked and confused at the sight, so now we know she wasn't in on it. Henderson just stares bustedly at Kiefer as his wife asks him what's going on. He can't exactly plead ignorance any more, so he just says he's been trying to protect her -- and his country. Unimpressed, Kiefer puts his gun against Henderson's knee again. Equally unimpressed, Henderson dares him to do it. Kiefer realizes that he's going to have to do something unexpected in order to get to the guy who taught him everything he knows about torture -- so he turns the gun aside and puts a round through Miriam's leg. Weren't expecting that, were you, Henderson? She screams, clutching her bloody thigh and her ruined slacks. Henderson reacts in shock and horror, and those of us with adolescent memories of seeing JoBeth Williams run around at the end of Poltergeist with no pants on kind of have to agree. Henderson and Kiefer scream at each other. Kiefer says he shot Miriam above the knee, but if Henderson makes him shoot her again, she'll be in a wheelchair permanently. Henderson's side of the conversation consists largely of curses. Crying, Miriam begs Henderson to tell Kiefer everything, but he sadly tells her he can't. "Forgive me," he begs. Yeah, good luck with that.
And now it's Kiefer's turn to be horrified. "You don't care about anyone," he tells Henderson. "Not even her." He utters the magic words, "Chloe, it's Jack," and tells her that he needs an ambulance. "Miriam Henderson's been shot in the leg," he explains, like someone else did it. As he tears up a towel that he got out of his man-purse, he orders Chloe to have CTU prep an interrogation room for Henderson, complete with hyocene pentothal. I'm assuming that's not something you put on a sundae. He applies pressure to Miriam's wound as Buchanan comes on the line at 5:57:54 to provide another update on the goings-on at the hospital.
Which gives us a smooth segue to Curtis, who's still in the room with the hazmat guys as they run a detector over the canister, probably hoping to defuse it by telekinesis. Just then another agent comes in, showing Curtis what they found on Viktor's body. It's the LED timer, currently at 1:12 and counting. Upon learning that defusing the device is impossible in the time they have left, Curtis makes the executive decision to carry the canister to the "containment unit." What, nobody thought to bring an Igloo cooler down here? Curtis picks it up and starts running with it in one hand and the timer in the other, agents and hazmat guys running ahead to clear the way. I've got to say, Curtis is really thumbing his nose at the Handsome Black Agent curse this time. They've got to run not only upstairs, but clear out of the building and into the parking lot, where there's a white van parked and waiting. As Curtis runs up to it, he orders the back doors of the van opened. One of the hazmat guys clambers inside and Curtis hands the canister off to him. The van holds a large Plexiglas container, suspended from the ceiling with the lid open. The canister is quickly placed inside and the lid secured with only two seconds to spare. Actually, it's negative seven seconds by my VCR timer, but seconds always go a little slower on this show when we can't actually see them ticking down. Someone needs to talk to either the editors or the prop guys about that. Curtis watches the timer in his hand beep down to zero, and right on cue, the canister in the containment unit opens up and releases its payload harmlessly into the capsule. Well, I say "harmlessly," but you know the resale value of that van just cratered. One of the hazmat guys says they're clear, and Curtis takes off his gas mask to report that the hospital is safe. "Good work, Curtis," Buchanan responds. Curtis turns to look at all the patients hanging out behind him in the parking lot. What a relief; now that they've been saved from death by nerve gas, they can all go inside and get back to dying of other things.
Hey, remember McSibling and her Loser Boyfriend? Looks like he's plumbed new depths of loserdom, as he's now kneeling on his apartment floor, bound and gagged. I could get used to seeing him shut up like that. But before I get a chance to really enjoy it, Fucked-up Accent Guy shoots him in the head, execution-style. McSibling, similarly restrained, screams through her gag, and gets a bullet of her own seconds later. Looks like he forgot to hit the ATM after all. Now that it's just Fucked-up Accent Guy and the two corpses, he calls Bierko to report that he's secured the keycard. Excuse me, "keycaRRRRd." He says he'll be able to reprogram it in five minutes, whereupon he'll be able to access CTU. "Good," says Bierko. It's 6:00:00, and we go directly from the ticking clock right into the episode's graphic violence warning. Which is really helpful if you're trying to avoid that kind of thing, as long as you didn't just flip over at 8:59 and watch two people get shot in the head.