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Gredenko and Fayed manage to get only one of their drones in the air before vacating their launch site. The Veep immediately decides to go nuclear on Mideastia, over the objections of Karen Hayes and nobody else. So Karen toys with the idea of pulling a Season-2-Darlene on Wayne and waking him up -- even if it endangers his life -- to stop it. An injured Kiefer gets back to CTU and finds out -- from Marilyn, of all people -- that Audrey's dead, supposedly killed in a car accident in China while looking for Kiefer. Now he's got a whole new mission in life: stop the terrorists, and then find Audrey's killers. Sounds like a setup for Season 7. Chloe figures out that the reason they can't find the drone on satellite is because someone in CTU is feeding data to the terrorists. The finger points to Nadia, who is already in an awkward position now that Chloe knows she's been using Milo's user ID. While Doyle interrogates her in a back room, Morris back-traces the data leak to a nearby building. Kiefer, Doyle, and CTU take out the drone's remote pilot, and then Kiefer takes the controls. He's able to prevent the drone from detonating its nuclear payload over San Francisco, but his godawful crash-landing at a loading dock near the Bay results in a radioactive spill. That's still good enough for the Veep to order that the nuclear strike on Mideastia proceed. As for the fate of Charles Logan, we get no updates whatsoever. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
It's already full dark outside the Russian Consulate, where Russian bodies are being zipped up to be flown home to the motherland because their boss was an asshole. Doyle walks up to where Kiefer's being attended by a medic, and asks how he is. Kiefer does the only thing he ever does when somebody asks him about himself, which is to irritatedly growl, "I'm fine." It's supposed to come of stoic, but it just makes me wish people would stop asking. Doyle asks for the medic's opinion, and is told that Kiefer probably has some rib fragments floating around inside him, causing internal bleeding. Ouch. That might take him out of commission for as long as an hour. Kiefer tells Doyle that he wants to stay on the mission, but Doyle tells him that's too bad, and walks off. Kiefer would probably yell or chase after him if the effort wouldn't catapult one of his lungs out onto the pavement.
Back at CTU, Logan's on the phone bringing the Veep and forgetful viewers up to speed: they know that Gredenko is somewhere in the Shadow Valley, getting ready to launch the nukes on remote-controlled drone aircraft. They've already begun the search, but have no idea how much time they have. Maybe Kiefer could have shared that Markov told him it would be two hours about an hour and a half ago. Never mind! There's no time to talk about the timeline!
In the Shadow Valley, Gredenko's and Fayed's men are working by floodlight. They actually only have one drone ready to launch, so Gredenko announces that they need to launch it now and get the hell out of there. Fayed wants to know what's wrong. Gredenko has to admit that the authorities know where they are, and are on their way. The other two nukes will have to wait until later. Fayed's kind of pissed that Markov spilled the beans, especially considering what a jerk Gredenko was about the two nukes Fayed lost control of earlier. Gredenko says that they can have a slap-fight later, but if they hang out here, they'll be killed or captured. Maybe even both. As Fayed orders his men to start packing up, Gredenko gets on his sat-phone and says that they're moving things ahead. The guy at the other end of the connection is the drone's designated remote-control pilot. As he fiddles with a bank of computers he and a couple other guys have set up in some empty building, he protests over the phone that he hasn't had time to do what he needs to do to keep the drone from getting shot down. Gredenko says that they'll worry about that when the drone is in the air, and orders him to launch now. The pilot sits down at his bank of computers, pulls out a fancy gamer joystick, and does his thing. Fayed and Gredenko watch as their one drone fires up its afterburners and streaks down the airstrip and up into the night. Watching the live feed from the drone's nose camera, the pilot allows himself a small smile. At 7:05:32, the terrorists in the desert head to their vehicles. Don't they have to take the wings back off of the other two drones first to get them to fit inside? Or are they going to strap them to rooftop luggage racks? And if so, won't the added lift reduce their traction to a dangerous degree? Come on, somebody has to think about these things.
At CTU, Nadia is on the phone with the long-unmentioned Exposition Call Center in Bangalore, promising to have some satellite data to them as soon as possible. She's starting to feel the stress, even though Milo has come to perch on her desk and fix her with a look that I'm sure he intends to be reassuring. He "supportively" clasps her wrist and promises that they'll get through it. Chloe picks this moment to come up to them, her forehead all wrinkled at the sight of this wholly inappropriate level of workplace PDA. Like they were fucking on the desk or something. Not to worry; she'll get her revenge later. They ask her what's up, and she says that she accidentally found out that Nadia's been using Milo's clearance code, which is a felony. They try to cover, but then Nadia says that Milo was just trying to help her get around the racial profiling measures that have been in place for the past eight hours. I'm actually amazed that anybody brought them up again. Chloe agrees with them that those measures are stupid, but they're still committing a felony. They try to convince Chloe not to tell, but Chloe informs them that she has no intention of squealing; otherwise she already would have. She just wants them to be more careful, before someone besides her notices. Which doesn't really explain why she made them squirm so much before saying so. Oh, wait -- it's Chloe. Never mind.
From over near Morris's workstation, Buchanan calls Nadia over: Morris has already gotten a visual satellite fix on the launched drone. It probably helped that the terrorists left all their floodlights on so that Morris could easily pinpoint the launch site. That's only sporting. CTU has also got an Air Force general on the line at 7:07:30. The general mentions that the drone in question is virtually invisible to radar, so Morris is going to have to visually guide the fighter planes to their targets. Nadia says that the drone's within four minutes of its nearest likely target, which is downtown L.A., and the general promises that his F-16s should be able to intercept within two minutes. Morris awkwardly says that might be tough, since the drone just disappeared from the satellite screens. He hops out of his chair like he's going outside to scan the skies with a pair of opera glasses. With an odd lack of urgency, the general calmly says that he'll keep his planes in a holding pattern until they find it. Or until the jets get knocked out of the sky by an EMP, whichever comes first.
While riding in the little terror caravan crossing the Mojave Desert, Gredenko gets a phone call from his drone pilot reporting that he's disabled CTU's ability to track the drone. They'll explain how a little later on, but it won't be any more credible then, either. Gredenko promises to call back later.
The Veep enters the White House Bunker's Battle Bridge, and poor Tom has to explain that CTU just told him they lost the drone, but they don't know how, and it's going to be pretty tough to find again. On the bright side, when it suddenly turns into a radioactive fireball half a mile wide, it'll stand out pretty clearly. Tom pulls out a list of disaster response scenarios that he wants to go over, but the Veep rudely cuts him off and tells Lisa to reschedule the meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to about one minute past ASAP. Tom wonders what's going on, and the Veep angrily reminds him that he warned the Mideastian ambassador about what would happen if another nuke went off inside the U.S. Tom weakly protests that there's still no proven connection between the terrorists and the Mideastian government. The Veep doesn't care: "These people need to understand that I'm not just rattling my saber." He plans to respond in kind. In other words, the Veep tells Lisa to have a list of nuclear targets in Mideastia drawn up: "I won't let another attack go unanswered, Tom." Tom shakes his head in dismay. It's 7:10:47. In other words, about a minute before an L.A.-bound drone would reach its target. You think the city will still be there after the commercials?
It is. At 7:15:12. Chloe has managed to eliminate Los Angeles as a possible target for the drone, thanks to her highly specialized technological savvy that allows her to determine that they haven't already been instantly incinerated in a nuclear furnace. Santa Barbara and San Diego will also be out of the woods in a few minutes, if they still exist. That leaves fifteen other possible targets in the drone's range, the largest of which are San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Phoenix. Buchanan tells them to have first responders ready there, and tells Morris to have the Air Force look in those areas first. Buchanan looks up to see that Kiefer and Doyle have entered the building, along with several non-speaking members of the strike team. Kiefer flags down Buchanan to ask if Gredenko's been picked up yet. Buchanan tries to blow him off with a terse "We're working on it," but that doesn't satisfy Kiefer, so Buchanan has to explain that Gredenko got away and the drone vanished from view. Kiefer makes a face like, "I'm in the car for ten minutes and look what happens." Buchanan sends Kiefer off to the CTU clinic to get patched up, and Kiefer goes with a request to be kept informed. Buchanan assigns point for the Gredenko/Fayed search (such as it is) to Doyle, and tells him to meet him in the Situation Room.
Kiefer and another CTU agent are walking through a back hallway to Medical at 7:16:32 when Kiefer spots Marilyn, just standing and talking to someone in an otherwise empty alcove. Kiefer asks for a little privacy. It would be funny if Marilyn left him alone with the faceless agent, but the reverse happens. This show disappoints me sometimes. Kiefer gets another chance to grump at someone that he's fine. He promises to check on Marilyn and Josh later on, presumably after all the remaining nukes have either been recovered or gone off. Marilyn smiles and says she always regretted how things ended between them, and that she thinks he feels the same. She goes in for a kiss, but Kiefer turns away. Oops. That must be almost as embarrassing for her as her association with the U.S. version of Coupling. Kiefer says that she's right about his feelings, but before he went to China, he was "with someone": "She doesn't even know I'm still alive." Well, that's not an impediment; she didn't know Kiefer was alive the day before he was last "with" her, either. I guess that's why Kiefer tells Marilyn that he has to talk to Audrey first. Marilyn makes an awkward face, because she has to break the news to him that Audrey's dead. How does she know? She read in the newspaper that Audrey was killed in a car accident in China a few months ago. She doesn't know much beyond that. So can they make out now?
Kiefer freaks out and starts heading back out to the floor, breathing hard. He presents himself in front of Chloe's desk, hangs up the handset she was just talking on (oops, lost the drone again), and angrily demands, "Why the hell didn't anybody tell me about Audrey?" Chloe bugs her eyes out like she just now got this page of the script, and says that Buchanan didn't want to tell Kiefer when he got back, since he was just supposed to die anyway. But now she realizes that she should have after he...you know, didn't. "She was in China looking for me?" Kiefer chokes out. Chloe says that Audrey was the one who figured out that the Chinese had Kiefer in the first place (putting her far behind several posters who guessed way in advance that the fifth season would end in just such a way), and had been trying to spring him via diplomatic back channels for the past year. All Chloe knows is that Division made a positive ID on the remains via DNA, and that the rest of the file was classified. Kiefer says that he wants the file now. Or, more accurately, NOW. Instead of protesting that she can't exactly drop everything she's doing right now to focus on Kiefer's little wobbler, Chloe says that she'll have to dig it out of the archives, which I hope are at least on site. "Just do it," he orders, as Santa Barbara may or may not be getting wiped off the map. Which is sad, because I like Santa Barbara. Buchanan happens to look out from where he's going over battle plans with Doyle in the Situation Room. He makes a face that says he already knows exactly what Kiefer's freaking out over. He makes a half-hearted guilty-face and decides to deal with it later.
The Veep's with Lisa, going over the attendees' list for the upcoming Cabinet/Joint Chiefs meeting, and he's not happy to hear that Karen Hayes will be there. He says that she was in favor of Wayne's "policy of appeasement," which is so not what that was. Appeasement in this situation would have been, "Okay, we'll blow up like good boys and girls, but then you have to stop, okay?" Lisa tells the Veep not to worry, under the circumstances, but the Veep knows Karen well enough not to want to underestimate her. And now, through the room's glass walls, he spots her coming down the hallway in a completely new outfit. See? Don't underestimate her. She went to Andrews Air Force Base and back, with time for a change of clothes, in only seven hours. She's Wonder Woman.
Karen meets up with Tom in the hallway. Noticing the fresh bruise on his forehead, she asks, "Did somebody push you down the stairs?" "No, Karen, I tripped over your ineptitude" is his witty retort. He poutily welcomes her back, and she says she's not going anywhere this time. Tom agrees, and says that nobody is sorrier than he is over what happened to Wayne. That's what he calls him: "Wayne." Shout-out? Karen says that at least they can agree on that. But they don't make out. Instead, they enter the Battle Bridge together, where the available members of the Joint Chiefs and the Cabinet have already assembled. The Veep calls the meeting to order and announces that Fayed and Gredenko have launched one of their nuclear drones, and that it's not looking good for their chances to find it in time, so he's planning a military response. The Secretary of Defense asks who he plans to respond to, since the terrorists are known to be stateless. The Veep, however, knows from AM talk radio that "elements within Abu Fayed's country train and fund terrorists organizations like his." The Veep says that he's already told the ambassador that another nuclear detonation inside the U.S. will be responded to with a nuclear strike. The Veep hastens to call it a "warning shot," aimed at an unpopulated area of Mideastia. So if Mideastia is a real country, at least we can narrow it down to the ones that have unpopulated areas. The Veep gives the floor to the JCoS Chairman, who says that they've picked out a nice spot near Mideastia's northern border where a nuke strike shouldn't kill more than two thousand people, give or take about twice that number in the ensuing fallout. The Veep's cool with that. Karen, who has been quietly getting more and more horrified ever since the Veep brought up retaliation, chimes in to say that the Mideastian government is doing its best to control terrorism. But of course that's not good enough for the Veep, so he wants to motivate them to do better. Karen says that a nuclear strike will do the opposite: the government's moderates will be pushed aside, and the terrorists will gain power, not to mention how much this is liable to piss off Russia and China. In short, the Veep might be about to start a world war. The Veep doesn't think that's likely, and he declares the debate over. The Veep gets up to leave, ordering the JCoS Chairman to have a nuclear strike sub standing by. Lisa follows her boss out, smirking for some reason like she's thinking, "Yay, vaporized brown people!" Karen glares across the table at Tom like this is all his fault. Which it sort of is, but she doesn't know that. It's 7:24:13.
7:28:35. At CTU, Milo stops Nadia to ask her about some technobabble he was expecting from her. She says that Morris will take care of it, but Milo's uncertain that Morris can handle it. Nadia seems to think that Morris has recovered. Milo wonders if that's just because Morris "had a drink and smoothed out." Nadia doubts it, because apparently the writers forgot that she wasn't in on that discussion a few hours ago. Milo's still not satisfied, so he goes over to Chloe and asks what she's up to. She's working on figuring out some drone-related technobabble (in between rummaging around in the archives to get Kiefer out of his tree, of course). Milo decides that's less important than having her drop that and go check Morris's breath for him. Chloe gets up at 7:29:46, marches across the floor to Morris, and plants a big one on him. "What was that for?" he asks. "Just checking your breath," Chloe says, already on her way back. Morris waves sardonically at Milo, who waves right back. At least Milo has the grace to be embarrassed. "He's fine," Chloe tells Milo as she sits down to get back to work. Well, he never told her to be subtle. "Got to love this place," Morris mutters to himself.
After only a few minutes back at work, Karen's already returned to her old groove of futilely haranguing Tom about shit. She's trying to get him to agree with her assessment that the Veep is off his rocker, and she's having a hard time of it, even though Tom is clearly struggling with it himself. Tom says that he has to do whatever the boss says. Karen says that Wayne's the boss, and would never go along with this. Tom says that Wayne has been wrong all day, and that as long as he's in a coma, the Veep's in charge. So pretty much the only way to get the Veep to abort the missile launch is for CTU to find and stop the drone. Oh, and they call him "Wayne" a couple more times too. Definitely a shout-out.
At 7:31:30, Buchanan, Doyle, and Milo are talking about the search for Gredenko and Fayed in the Shadow Valley. Which is, of course, not going well, even with tire tracks leading away from a pool of floodlights visible to the naked eye from space. And anyway it kind of becomes moot when Chloe comes in with her laptop and announces that she knows how the drone is evading their satellite search -- the data is coming from inside the house! Well, inside CTU, that is. They have a leak. The soundtrack reacts like this is news. When does CTU not have a leak? Doyle asks if she can isolate which workstation is sending the data, and she replies that the mole is using some kind of technobabble that means it'll take an hour to narrow it down. Buchanan obviouses that they don't have that long. Doyle looks out on the floor, notices Nadia, and tells Chloe to check Nadia's station first. Milo leaps to Nadia's defense (and, really, to his own, because the last thing he needs is for someone else to figure out that Nadia's on his user ID), accusing Doyle of targeting her for being a Muslim. Doyle says it's standard protocol: "And yeah, she is a Moose-lim. That's enough to go on." Milo calls him a racist. Buchanan says that they have to start somewhere. but Milo's still insisting that Nadia's loyal to the U.S. Why not offer a compromise, like going in alphabetical order, and then act all surprised when Nadia's last name turns out to be Yassir? Doyle asks if Milo's basing his assessment on a desire to get into Nadia's pants. Like there's room. The suit she's wearing, Nadia couldn't get a pen into her jacket pocket without taking it off. They're about to come to blows, but Buchanan roars, "All right! That's enough!" He comes over and steps between them, even though they've already separated themselves, and starts to lecture them into behaving themselves.
And while they've been wasting all this time arguing, Chloe's found something on her laptop: according to her, the culprit is, in fact, Nadia. She's traced the data leak to Nadia's computer. Buchanan tells her to shut down Nadia's workstation from there, but Chloe says that the only way to cut off the data stream is to reboot CTU's entire mainframe, which would completely shut the whole place down for a good twenty minutes. You'd think that with all of CTU's high technology, the place wouldn't be so short on off-switches. Doyle's already on the phone calling for security. Everyone converges on Nadia, and Doyle is the one who hauls her out of her seat and starts firing accusatory questions into her face. Buchanan tells him to back off, and then tells the guards to take her to Holding. Amid her protestations of innocence, Nadia's led off, locking eyes with Milo (who's still in the Situation Room) as she passes. Buchanan tells Morris -- who's still agape at what just happened -- to take over Nadia's station and run a backtrace to figure out where the data's being sent to. Morris "Excuse me"s Doyle out of his way and gets to work. Surprisingly, Doyle moves without punching anyone.
Gredenko is still in the shotgun seat of his truck, driving down the road, struggling with a large road map that only makes him look like a lost tourist. He's on the phone with his pilot, asking where the drone is now. The pilot gives the current coordinates and reports, "The bomb will detonate over San Francisco within twenty minutes." San Francisco again? Damn, what'd you guys do to piss off a Limbaugh-feting, Santorum-donating, McCarthy-defending softy like Joel Surnow anyway? Wait, question withdrawn. Gredenko hangs up, pleased at how many of his fellow communists he's about to kill. It's 7:34:55.
7:39:22. Wayne's still unconscious inside the Bunker's operating room. His doctor is giving instructions to an attending nurse while Karen peers creepily through the window. As the doctor exits, Karen accosts him to ask how Wayne's doing. The doctor says that it got worse in the past fifteen minutes; some cranial pressure made it necessary for him to induce a coma to reduce the swelling. Like Wayne's brain getting bigger would be a bad thing. The doc doesn't think there was any neural damage, which is good because it would be sad if Wayne got even dumber. Karen asks if it would be possible to wake Wayne up so that she can speak to him about a matter of national security. The doctor says that he couldn't authorize it without permission from Wayne's family. He happens to mention that Sandra is here. Oh, hot damn. My favorite. The doctor says that more swelling could cause permanent brain damage, so it's not a good idea to bring him around. And then he dashes off to, I don't know, deal with another patient somewhere else? He's in a terrible hurry, whatever the case. Karen turns back to the operating-room window, but this time she looks across the room to its other door. Sandra is outside that door, looking in worriedly at her brother. Between Wayne and Walid, it looks like Sandra's going to be spending the few episodes shuttling between hospital rooms.
CTU. While Chloe and Morris are busy trying to track the destination of the rogue data stream, Milo is busy lounging in his chair and watching a live video feed of Doyle interrogating Nadia. It's not like he has anything else to do while a nuclear bomb controlled by terrorists is streaking over U.S. airspace, right? Is countering terrorism his job, or something? At 7:41:10, Chloe comes by so that Milo can whine to her about Nadia's situation. Chloe doesn't know if Nadia's innocent or not, but since the data was routed through her station and she wasn't around when Sarah got framed under similar circumstances two seasons ago, she doesn't know what to think. Milo goes back to pouting until Morris announces that he's managed to technobabble where the signal is going to: an address about three blocks away, conveniently enough. Milo tells Morris to inform Buchanan, because he's got to go save Nadia from Doyle.
Doyle's got Nadia in an interrogation room, but she's not talking. Especially when he clamps one of his meathooks around her throat. He Kiefers that he'll do what he needs to do to get his answers, and then lets her breathe again. She gasps that she read his file, and knows what he did in Denver, accusing, "You enjoy hurting people. You get off on it." That makes Doyle totally different from Kiefer, of course. Doyle doesn't appreciate Nadia's attempt to change the subject, and when he roughly grabs a handful of her hair, Milo swoops in through the wide-open door and heroically tells Doyle to step off. Except he makes a big standoff out of it before informing Doyle that they have the drone pilot's location, and that it's nearby. Way to bury the lede. At 7:43:20, Doyle walks out, warning, "We're not through with her, Milo." Milo sort of coldly asks if Nadia's okay. She pants that she is, and proclaims her innocence to Milo. Instead of responding, he just sort of looks at her suspiciously. She tells him to leave. He does. She cries. It's sad. We care.
Kiefer sits on his bed in the CTU clinic, back in jeans and no shirt, but with his ribs all taped up so that it looks like he's wearing a white tube top. Sexay! He settles down for a quick read of Audrey's file. Not much to see on the inside front page but her mug shot and the word "DECEASED" stamped diagonally across the sheet. Flipping through, Kiefer sees photos of the accident scene, with Audrey's poorly-covered body nearby, and something about the way her watch looks like it was put on her wrist after her arm was covered in blood seems to draw his attention. There's also a reproduction of Audrey's charred passport. I'm calling it right now: in order to get Kiefer out, Wayne gave Audrey to the Chinese. I realize that this makes very little sense, which of course is the strongest possible argument in favor of my theory. When Kiefer looks up from the file to see armored CTU agents going down the hall on their way out, he knows he wants in on whatever's up. Even if they're just going for Thai. He eases himself off the bed and asks a passing agent what's up. Upon hearing that they're moving in on the drone pilot, Kiefer makes a determined face.
Out on the floor, Buchanan's briefing the agents and the office staff, saying that it might be a good idea for them to be kind of extra secure since there are terrorists operating within a few blocks of them. Can't be too careful, especially in light of how often this place gets gassed and bombed even when terrorists are nowhere nearby. As Buchanan sends everyone off to do their thing, Kiefer (now in a new, dark blue t-shirt) comes up to Chloe and asks her for a PDA and a phone to take on the operation he's inviting himself along for. Chloe doesn't bother arguing; for that we have Buchanan, who shows up and asks what Kiefer thinks he's doing. "You should have told me about Audrey, Bill," Kiefer guilts, handing Buchanan the file. Buchanan makes his excuses for not saying anything about Audrey's "accident." Of course, Kiefer already knows that Audrey was murdered, although he doesn't say how. He tells Buchanan that Audrey died trying to save him because she thought he was worth it, and he doesn't want her sacrifice going to waste. So he's going to go take the terrorists down, and then when he's done with that he's going to go find Audrey's murderers and take them down as well. And because this all sounds perfectly rational and reasonable to Buchanan, he decides to let Kiefer take point on the operation to take out the drone pilot. Of course he does. It's 7:46:28.
7:50:54. The drone pilot is both piloting and talking on his headset phone to Gredenko, reporting that the drone is within three minutes of the "target perimeter." This will turn out to be an important phrase. When the drone crosses it, the bomb will automatically detonate at an altitude of 500 feet, for maximum damage. The pilot starts to congratulate Gredenko, but Gredenko just wants him to shut up and fly.
While these three minutes are ticking away, Kiefer, Doyle, and their team are just hanging out near the fence of the empty relay station the terrorists have taken over. He reports over his earpiece that they're in position, the gate's open, and there's a van parked in back. Buchanan and Chloe give him directions to the part of the building where the drone pilot seems to be sitting. Kiefer's still hurting, and Doyle offers to take point, but Kiefer declines. "Whatever you say," Doyle agrees, because Kiefer's the only person he knows who's more violent than Doyle is. Followed by their team, they head toward the building with weapons drawn at 7:52:10. In the outer yard, they spot some unsuspecting guy walking along in a utility company jacket, so Kiefer shoots him down on sight. Better hope they have the right place.
You know, we still haven't found out what happened to Logan. I just hope we don't come back to him in the middle of the hour, still in the ambulance and still in cardiac arrest.
Inside the building, the pilot and another utility-jacketed random hear a noise, so the pilot sends the other guy to go check on it. I don't have to tell you what happens to the other guy when he goes around the corner. The pilot hears the silenced gunshots and dives down behind his computer bank to pull out a handgun. Presumably, the pilotless drone doesn't immediately careen into the side of a mountain. The pilot starts shooting when CTU comes in, but hits no one. Doyle gets him in the leg when the pilot does a crappy job of taking cover, and when the pilot tries to pull out a grenade, Kiefer flanks him and shoots him down before he can pull out the pin. The grenade rolls ignored across the floor. I wasn't sure the pin was still in it upon first viewing, and I kept expecting the thing to explode for, like, the thirty seconds. Kiefer goes straight to the computer console and takes the controls, reporting over his earpiece that the target is San Francisco. He figures out that all he can do from here is steer the drone; he's helpless to deactivate the bomb. Doyle has, meanwhile, patched a laptop back into CTU, and Kiefer figures out that the drone is set to detonate as soon as it crosses the perimeter line. Which is helpfully depicted on several of the computer screens before him, looming across the drone's immediate path. Chloe warns him not to turn too sharply, or the drone will stall and he'll lose control. Kiefer? Lose control? Never. Milo gives Kiefer thirty seconds before the drone crosses the target perimeter, and as Kiefer tries to steer the drone off-course in time, Doyle whips out his watch so that he can be even more annoying than usual. He counts down past twenty and ten seconds, and finally Kiefer gets the drone to turn aside, just in time. Chloe tells him as much, but Kiefer can't control the drone anymore, and needs a place to land it before it crashes into the Transamerica Pyramid or something. Chloe finds a long stretch of residential road, but Kiefer wants someplace unpopulated. Picky, picky. Chloe sends him to an industrial park instead, and Buchanan gives the order to dispatch teams there now. Kiefer manages to set the drone down on an empty loading dock. But his landing sucks, sending up sparks and flames and leaving it burning on the dock. The video feed goes to static, but CTU quickly hears that there wasn't a detonation. There's already a fire and rescue unit on scene. Wow, San Francisco firemen are speedy. Back at the relay station, the CTU medic determines that the shot-up pilot is still alive. Kiefer wants him awake. And then the grenade explodes. Not really.
The drone's still burning and the bomb cylinder is bent as the local fire chief carefully approaches. He calls for a Geiger counter, which starts making a noise like ten yards of Velcro ripping open. Wisely, everyone runs away. The burning drone goes splitscreen, while Wayne continues to coma, Buchanan gets on the phone, CTU tries to wake up the pilot, Sandra watches her brother, and Nadia continues to stress out. By the way, I'm fine with Sandra being back if she continues to not talk.
In the Battle Bridge, the Veep takes Buchanan's call reporting that the bomb didn't detonate. Tom and Karen are relieved, but the Veep looks pissed. Because he's eeeevil. Buchanan adds that there's been a radioactive leak as a result of the drone's shit landing. "So what we're essentially dealing with is a dirty bomb," the Veep decides. Karen jumps in and says that's something totally different -- this is a "radiological spill." So technically, the Veep should nuke Kiefer. The Veep still says that it counts as an attack on the nation, and asks if there are casualties. Buchanan says that the first responders are probably toast, but that radioactive material wasn't dispersed, so casualties should be low. The Veep ends the call, pauses, and orders, "Proceed with the warning strike." Karen freaks and tries to talk him down, but he's made up his mind. Even Tom tries to reason with him that the nuking of Mideastia was only supposed to occur in the event of a nuclear detonation, but the Veep says that's a technicality, boasting, "I gave fair warning to the prime minister and I intend to carry it out." The Veep asks SecDef how long it will take to move the sub into position. SecDef tells him that once the Veep gives the order, it'll be about an hour, which should keep us pretty busy for the episode. "The order is given," the Veep intones. "Fire the missile as soon as they're in range." You can see how he and Wayne got to be such good buddies. It's 8:00:00.