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Kiefer is, believe it or not, still under arrest when Doyle and his men head out to "Bloomfield" to get Cheng and the nuke's component. That means Kiefer is trapped in a CTU holding room when something horrible happens. Yes, Chloe parades Marilyn in there to have a heart-to-heart about Audrey. Shudder. That's not the only romantically awkward scene of the hour, either, because Morris further explains why he dumped Chloe and Milo acts all noble-martyr about Nadia's burgeoning feelings for Doyle. Despite being grounded, Kiefer's about to meet some Chinese guys anyway, because Cheng's men aren't at Bloomfield; they're busting into CTU from the sewers below. They start killing people forthwith, including Milo (that'll learn Eric Balfour to change his hair in the middle of a season). Kiefer gets loose and heads straight to Marilyn and Josh, only to learn that Josh is who the Chinese commandos are after. As Kiefer says, "What?" Kiefer cuts Josh loose in the CTU ventilation system, but the commandos force Josh to turn himself in to them by threatening to shoot Marilyn. Meanwhile, the Veep and Tom send Lisa back to her spy boyfriend to plant false information that's supposed to get back to the Russians, but all that gets planted is -- no, I'm sorry, I can't go there. They just have sex, okay? Again, shudder. Cheng reports that his mission has been accomplished, and we learn why he wanted Josh -- so he could hand him over to Kiefer's dad in exchange for fixing the nuke's component. Really, is there enough "whatever" in the world at this point? Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Josh Bauer gets a freeze-frame in this week's previouslies. You know that there's no way this can possibly be good for Josh Bauer. Same for Lisa Miller. Strangely, Audrey gets one as well, and she's not even in the episode.
When the episode starts, Kiefer continues to sit in his holding room, a gobsmacked expression still on his face in reaction to the mean thing Heller said to him at the end of the last hour. Or maybe he looks like that because in the past two and a half minutes, a large metal table has somehow appeared in the middle of the room, right in front of his chair. Nadia enters, along with two uniformed security guards, to tell him that Heller and Audrey just left. Kiefer stands up and starts pacing around the table as Nadia adds that Heller told her to "reiterate" his demand that Kiefer stay away from Audrey, and that Heller plans to get a restraining order. Kiefer asks whether Audrey's clue panned out, and Nadia tells him about the lead to the copper refinery, and why they think Cheng might be there, and that Doyle's heading there shortly. Of course, Kiefer wants to go along. He never can stand to be left behind on anything. Nadia reminds him that he's still under arrest, and Kiefer argues that the mission needs him, because he knows Cheng better than anyone. Nadia points out that Kiefer disobeyed a presidential order, which is, of course, how Cheng got the component in the first place. Exactly Kiefer's point: "I caused this mess. Let me clean it up." Nadia accuses him of just wanting revenge, and Kiefer readily admits that too. After softening her up with all of this verbal judo, Kiefer begs Nadia to let him keep his word to Wayne. Nadia thinks it over, and says she can't. Whoa, I wasn't expecting that. Nadia has Velvet-resistant superpowers. Kiefer backs off from the argument, but then he starts to cut appraising looks at the guards in the room, like he's going to be allowed to join the mission if he can just get past a couple of guys in neckties. Nadia warns him not to even think about it, or she'll have him restrained. So Kiefer just slowly walks back around the table and sits in his chair. He pathetically offers to help from CTU by running Tactical on the operation. Nadia says that Division is sending over a section chief to take over, and that she'll take it up with whomever that ends up being. "Okay, thanks," Kiefer mutters, defeated, knowing that Nadia was his best chance. Did anyone ever bother to tell him that Buchanan got fired, or does Kiefer just know it the way he knows everything else? Nadia leaves the room, followed by the guards. I notice that the smarter one had his stun gun in his hand the whole time. That's how I know he's the smarter one.
Out on the CTU floor, Morris is looking at a satellite image of Bloomfield, with Cheng's Hummer parked right outside, visible to the stars. This giant facility, and it doesn't even have so much as a carport. Milo tells Morris to do some technobabble with it, and then asks Chloe how LAPD's perimeter is coming together. Chloe drones an answer, and Milo notices from her tone that something's up. So Morris helpfully chimes in, "Chloe and I have split up." He calmly says that they're all still being adult and professional about it, and advises Milo to stay out of it. Milo can't agree fast enough. He's already had enough awkwardness for one day, and besides, if anyone starts paying attention to him, they might notice how completely different his hair is all of a sudden. Someone comes over with a transcript of Marilyn's statement for Marilyn to review. Remember Marilyn? Chloe says that she'll take care of it. Nobody seems to have a problem with a top analyst leaving the floor right before a major operation in order to do some administrative busywork.
In the CTU ready room, Doyle and his armored agents are getting locked and loaded. Nadia comes in and calls for attention, looking quite tiny among all the Kevlar in the room. She briefs the men on their mission, a task which seems to involve repeating a lot of stuff from the last episode. Long story short: they have to get inside Bloomfield, nab Cheng, and recover the component. And if they fuck it up, the Russians will attack the U.S. So no pressure or anything. Nadia finishes her speech at 2:07:22 and opens the floor for questions. Nobody has any. As the briefing breaks up, Doyle goes up to Nadia and says she's doing well. "I'm just trying to keep the roof from caving in until my replacement gets here," Nadia replies. Not to get ahead of ourselves here, but it's not the roof she needs to be worrying about. Doyle says that they're bringing every available agent to Bloomfield, and that if Cheng's there, they'll get him. Better hope he's there, then, since you're putting all your eggs in one basket. Nadia tells Doyle to be careful. Doyle nods, making that face he does when he's making a big deal of how he's not making a big deal of something. Leaving the ready room, Nadia sees that Milo saw the whole thing, and that he doesn't look happy. Although that might be because someone stuck his head in the toilet during the previouslies.
Mirroring the scene at CTU, a bunch of buff Chinese guys are also locking and loading. Except that these guys aren't in Kevlar; most of them don't even have sleeves. That is how buff they are. Cheng's tech support guy is there too, and he's learned Mandarin since the last hour. He and an arriving Cheng have a subtitled conversation about how Tech Support Guy needs to upload some data to the men. Okay, one never expects 24 to avoid stereotypes all the time, but the implication that all Asians are walking PDAs is kind of offensive. Tech Support Guy isn't sure the dudes can pull off whatever Cheng has planned for them, but Cheng is confident. He calls over the leader -- a guy who looks like an Asian version of McSteamy from Grey's Anatomy, if you can imagine such a gentleman -- and tells them that they need to finalize their attack plan so that they can attack "the target" in fifteen minutes. Doesn't fifteen minutes seem like kind of a short time to finalize an attack plan? Even for someone who's capable of conjuring a small army of commandos out of thin air? It's 2:09:03.
2:13:28. In case you forgot, there was a nuclear explosion in Valencia today. Josh is still watching the news reports on a TV monitor. He and his mom, Marilyn, are in some space in CTU that's been set up like their own little hotel room. It's a hotel room with glass and concrete walls, mind you, so it's not particularly homey. Still, Marilyn wants Josh to turn off the tube and try to get some sleep. After all, keeping her makeup this fresh so far into the night is taking a toll. Josh is having a little crisis about how his dad let 12,000 people get killed today, and says he wishes he'd never born. Marilyn tells him, "You are not your father." I still suspect that even Josh's father wasn't his father, if you know what I mean, but as always, that will have to wait until a later episode. She holds him while he cries, but when she glances through the door to see Chloe approaching like an awkward angel of death, she gets bored with that in a hurry. Josh says that he wants to go home. Marilyn says that they'll go home in the morning, but right now she wants him to go to sleep so that she can go talk to an adult for the first time in several hours. At 2:14:55, Marilyn joins Chloe in the hallway. Chloe hands over Marilyn's statement for her to review, and then decides to do a little meddling for no apparent reason and inform Marilyn that Audrey's still alive. Marilyn is shocked to realize that she isn't going to be getting into Kiefer's pants any time soon.
A cell phone rings on a bedside table. Who could be calling in the middle of the night? Lisa's spy boyfriend wakes up and answers it. Which is weird, because he just told his Russian handler that he was going to try to get more info from her in the few hours. Now I see that was just a ruse for him to be allowed off the phone so that he could get some sleep. But then, wouldn't you know it, Lisa calls him. No rest for the wicked. She says she's sorry she had to leave so quickly, but that there was a crisis with the Russians. "What kind of crisis?" Boyfriend asks, sitting up and paying attention. Lisa says that it doesn't matter, and that it's been averted. By the way, as Lisa's having this conversation on her cell phone, Tom and about half a dozen Secret Service guys are in there with her, listening in on headphones. The Veep is there too, but he passed on the headphones because he doesn't want to mess up his hair. Lisa offers to "pick up where they left off." Are we supposed to think that they didn't actually have sex before Lisa left in the last hour? Or does "pick up where we left off" just mean "have more sex at 5:15 in the morning?" Boyfriend gives a little "but I was sleeeeping" chuckle and asks, "Doesn't Daniels want you to stick around so he can paw you every chance he gets?" Lisa glances over at the Veep, who doesn't react, because he can't hear, and more's much the pity. "I'm the last thing on his mind right now," says Lisa, which is just about the most diplomatic thing she could have come up with. They exchange "I love you"s, and Lisa says she's on her way. They hang up.
Tom gives a capsule review of Lisa's performance: "Sounded genuine enough." He says that the thing is for Lisa to go back to Boyfriend and be sure to leave him alone in the room with her PDA. That way, he can sneakily download all the fake memos and messages they've stuffed it with to the effect that the U.S. has recovered the Russian nuke component from the Chinese. And then, in theory, President Suvarov will call off his plan to attack the U.S. military base in Centralasia. Despite the fact that her other option right now is to go to trial for treason, Lisa has the stones to say she's not sure that she can "be with him again" now that she knows he's been lying to her all this time. The Veep is spectacularly unsympathetic as he drifts past, rumbling, "For the last year, you've had no problem lying to me." Oh, Veep, fifth grade was a long time ago. Get over it. Tom swallows the giant horse-pill of Vitamin-A-For-"Awkward" that someone just stuck in his mouth, and says that he and Agent Hollister will be positioned in a surveillance van across the street from Boyfriend's apartment when Lisa -- ahem -- "reinserts." Tom advises, "Do as you're told and it should all go smoothly." Well, unless someone takes a shot at the Veep while the White House's ranking Secret Service officer, the aforementioned Hollister, is out doing some heavy breathing in a spookmobile.
At 2:18:06, Kiefer's still contemplating the table in front of him, wondering whether it was lowered from the ceiling or if it rose from the floor or what. The door opens and Chloe enters -- followed by Marilyn. Just what he needs right now. Kiefer asks what she's doing there. Marilyn says that she's just there to see if Kiefer's all right. Acting all shifty, Kiefer says, "I don't think the charges will stand up, due to extenuating circumstances." The chief extenuator being the fact that he's Kiefer, dammit! Extenuate that, bitch! Of course, Marilyn's not asking about that, but about Kiefer's reaction to the news that Audrey's alive. Looking like this conversation is more torturous to him than anything that happened to him in China, Kiefer has to explain that Heller already took Audrey away from CTU and doesn't want him around. He keeps cutting all these looks at Chloe. She's so on his list now. Marilyn keeps peppering Kiefer with all of these questions until Kiefer finally snaps that he doesn't want to talk about it. Marilyn takes a breath and says that she and Josh are going to be allowed to leave CTU in the morning. "Good," says Kiefer, a bit too eagerly. Marilyn says that she wants to bring Josh by before they leave, and Kiefer agrees, like he's consenting to give a papal audience or something. Marilyn promises Kiefer, "When all this is over...I'll be there for you." Kiefer manages not to throw the table at her. Instead, he just thanks her, and then says that she should really go. Because there's a, you know, thing. That she has to do. Somewhere else. Anywhere else, really. Marilyn finally leaves. Chloe's about to follow her out the door, but Kiefer sharply calls her name . Uh-oh, now she's in for it. But Kiefer is only wondering if there's any word from Doyle's team yet. Chloe says that Doyle and his men will be at Bloomfield any second, and leaves with one last promise that they'll get Cheng and the component back. Kiefer's left alone again with his table, thinking, "Maybe it slid out horizontally from the far wall."
Back at Cheng's hideout, the hot head commando -- who, according to the closed captioning, is named Zhou -- shows Cheng his GameBoy with a map of the "target." He complains that there's only one entry point. "Yes, but it will put you in optimal position for a quick, surgical strike," Cheng assures him. We will shortly see that when they say "surgical," they're using the word in the medieval sense.
Outside the Bloomfield Copper refinery at 2:20:27, a whole fleet of CTUmobiles comes to a halt, disgorging Doyle and every armored CTU agent still awake at this hour. Better hope nobody makes a move on CTU with all the hard-asses out of the building.
Inside Cheng's hideout, Zhou warns Cheng that people are going to die in this operation. Cheng is large with not caring.
At CTU, Morris reports that Doyle's teams are moving in. And we can see them cutting through the chains securing the gates so that they can drive their CTUmobiles onto the grounds. Meanwhile, Cheng is telling Zhou that his objective is to "obtain the package." Zhou doesn't look like the kind of guy who has any worries in the package department.
Doyle's men blow the doors and pour into the building. Which, as you've already figured out by the fact that I've been saying "Bloomfield" and "Cheng's hideout" non-interchangeably, is empty. Your sneaky intercuts can't fool us anymore, 24. Meanwhile, Cheng's commando squad gets ready to descend ropes through a hole in the concrete floor and into the sewer lines, which will take them 180 meters to the target. "Don't let me down," Cheng tells Zhou. They start dropping down into the ankle-deep sewage. Do they plan to attack the target with poo?
Meanwhile, Doyle and his men have finally gotten the memo that there are no humans in the building. There is, however, a hell of a clue: a giant pile of empty munitions crates. Seriously, there's a mountain of wooden boxes so huge that I don't see how fewer than a hundred people could be carrying it all. Unless there was a hell of a lot of bubble wrap in there. At 2:22:46, Doyle pulls out his cell phone and calls Nadia to tell her that Cheng's not there. "If they haven't hit one of our roadblocks, then I'm guessing they got out before we could lock down the perimeter," says Doyle. Before they could lock down the perimeter? Why not just say "before the sun cooled"? Doyle tells her about the empty crates he found, which tell him that there's a small army wandering around the city fully jacked. He thinks they're planning a large-scale assault. "Assault on what?" Nadia wonders.
As if in answer, we find ourselves back down in the sewers with Cheng's commandos. They reach a T-junction, and Cheng tells them to turn east: "That will put you directly beneath CTU." Wow, too bad all of CTU's armored tactical guys are gone and wandering around an empty building. It's 2:23:56.
2:28:22. On the CTU floor, Morris turns around in his chair and asks Chloe for a little technobabble assistance. She doesn't answer at first, but then technobabbles a response. And it's the saddest technobabble you've ever heard. Morris turns back to his monitor, but Chloe doesn't want to leave it at that. Glowering out at him from the stygian shadow created by her bangs, she grumps, "I'm sorry, but I'm really having a hard time with what happened between us." Morris says that it isn't her fault, what she said about his arming the nukes and being a coward: "It wasn't stupid. It was the God's honest truth." Chloe still maintains that she didn't mean it, but Morris is certain that she did: "No matter how much you think you love me, there'll always be that knowledge, and you won't be able to get past it." Chloe thinks he's wrong. Morris reminds Chloe that she knows him better than anyone. "When am I ever wrong?" he asks, and goes back to work at 2:30:03. Well, when you told Fayed "Not bloody likely, mate," that turned out to be wrong. Not to be mean or anything.
Down the street from what I initially thought was Lisa's apartment building but is in fact her boyfriend's, Tom is standing outside a parked van and giving Lisa last-minute instructions to leave Boyfriend alone in the room with her PDA as soon as possible. He notices that she's looking a little stressed, and she admits that she's nervous. "Well, you should be," Tom tells her, "because if this doesn't work, you will be facing treason charges." So come on, relax. Lisa protests that she's cooperating, and Tom advises her to mention that at her trial, or she can get a grip and do whatever she needs to do. Rivalries between Chiefs of Staff can be so ugly. Tom calls for the car, and Agent Hollister hands him Lisa's bag, which he hands over to Lisa, now with a surveillance camera tucked inside. A town car pulls up, and Lisa hops in the back for the one-block ride to Boyfriend's building. Tom has his guys close up the van so that the surveillance isn't quite so obvious. I mean, I'm sure that everyone in Washington D.C. assumes that every parked van is surveilling someone, but I doubt Tom wants people to see that he's the one doing it.
During this unfolding international crisis, as seconds tick away to a confrontation with Russia, the Veep is busying himself by sitting in the Oval Office and waiting for his phone to ring. Thank God a strong leader is in charge again. Tom calls to report that Lisa's heading inside the apartment building. The Veep asks whether Tom's sure she can pull it off. "Well, let's hope so, sir," says Tom, which is the only thing he can say. It's not like they're scalp-deep in options right now. The Veep thanks Tom for going above and beyond his job description, because he doesn't know that when Wayne was White House Chief of Staff, he expanded that job description to include burglary. "Well, we're all doing some improvising today, sir," Tom says. Aaaand we have a tagline for the Season 6 DVD box. Tom says that they all agreed to "keep the circle small." You don't have to cast as many actors that way.
Lisa regards her boyfriend's apartment door like it's the one at the top of the stairs in The Sixth Sense. Before she can get up the nerve to knock on it, her boyfriend swings it open. Despite having the cojones to cheat on her boss, the Vice President of the United States and Acting Commander-in-Chief, Lisa's suddenly all nervous and weird around her boyfriend, not even closing her eyes when they kiss. Boyfriend lets her in and asks her what's up, as she carefully sets her bag on an end table so that the camera inside it can cover the room. Lisa tries to play off her nervousness, but she sucks at it, and Boyfriend is getting suspicious. Lisa says that she's going to "freshen up," but when she tries to disappear into the bedroom to leave Boyfriend alone with her purse, he pulls her back and tells her to relax, since she just showered an hour ago. "Yeah, but now I gotta drop a deuce," Lisa doesn't say. There is macking, and Lisa continues to try to get away, but it doesn't work. Boyfriend is kind of a shitty spy if he's refusing even to get a chance to do any spying. But at least now Lisa knows he also likes her for her, right? Out in the surveillance van, Tom finds himself in the awkward position of watching on a video monitor as a coworker is undressed by someone else. "We couldn't spring for a color display?" he thinks. It's 2:35:07.
2:39:32. Cheng's commando team reaches a point in the sewer tunnel where they're directly beneath a grate. Light is streaming from above. They get ready to blow the grate while Cheng has his Tech Support Guy enter a code into his laptop. A moment later, Tech Support Guy has hacked into CTU's security system and is shutting things down. Well, that was easy. By the way, if the only thing separating CTU from the sewer is an open grate, wouldn't the building be a little stinky? That Sentox last year would have seemed like a breath of fresh air.
Unaware that they're about to be attacked, Milo comes up to Nadia and says that they're not getting very far in figuring out which way Cheng went from Bloomfield. He asks if there's any new word from Doyle yet. Nadia tells him that Doyle's men are still doing their forensic sweep, and will call in soon. She asks if there's anything else on Milo's mind. Clearly there is, aside from the awful rug he's sporting this hour, but he just says "never mind" and walks away. Which, in this case, is the astronomical distance of about four feet. Nadia comes up to him and brings up the Doyle thing (ew, I just grossed myself out). Milo acts ten kinds of awkward as he says he understands if Nadia has feelings for Doyle. Big of him. Seriously. I wouldn't understand that myself, and I'm not the one who's supposedly getting thrown over. Nadia waits for Milo to finish stuttering, and then admits that she doesn't know what she feels. Well, snap it up, lady! You've known Doyle for hours! She asks Milo for some time to sort things out. I'm prepared to give her three hours and nineteen minutes.
Whatever Milo's response was going to be, it's interrupted when Chloe calls over to report that she's found some blurry, fifty-minute-old infrared satellite footage of a bunch of guys leaving Bloomfield in SUVs. Nadia tells Milo to give the LAPD descriptions of the vehicles, and I'm sad to say that we won't get to hear Milo on the phone with an impatient dispatcher saying, "The suspects are driving several green, glowing blobs." Nadia tries to call Doyle on her headset, but there's nobody there. That's because Cheng has had all of CTU's comm systems shut down remotely. This is probably connected to the fact that Zhao and his men are blowing open the grate that will give them access to CTU from the sewer.
Up on the main floor, it's 2:42:06 as Milo complains that he can't get an outside line. Morris thinks it might be "a hiccup in the server." That's why he gets paid the big analyst bucks. Milo answers a ringing phone, and we know things are fucked up when it doesn't do the trademark CTU ring. The commandos climb out of the sewers. And Morris discovers that whatever's up with the servers, it's a lot more than a hiccup. And the commandos get set up in the CTU basement, while Cheng watches live remote video feeds from every camera in CTU. "Hey, that's the room where I first met Kiefer and he lied to me," he says in Mandarin.
Even though everything else in the building is down, Chloe is still able to satellite-track Cheng's vehicles to...six blocks away. Milo hangs up the phone and, with more annoyance than worry, says that every security camera in CTU went down at once. Could these facts be related? Nadia finally gets it, and orders Chloe, "Code red emergency lockdown!" A bit late.
The commandos don't seem too worried about the alarm klaxon that's just gone off for the second time in as many hours. A CTU security guard on a catwalk elsewhere in the building acknowledges Nadia's code red confirmation over his walkie-talkie, and then draws his weapon and heads for the nearest door. Which pops open to reveal the commando team. Zhao takes the guard down with a burst of machine pistol fire. Kiefer hears it in his holding room. So does Nadia on the floor, and she yells at everyone to get to their "assigned safe rooms," whatever that means. Oh, I see: it means that everyone needs to start running in panic, in as many different directions as possible. CTU really thinks of everything. Up in the lounge, Marilyn and Josh also hear the gunfire, and any chance they had of getting some Z's just went right out a nonexistent window. Nadia tells Morris to flood the corridors with tear gas. Morris tries, but he can't. "I don't know how they've done it, but we're completely paralyzed!" he complains. And then the bad guys come in on the mezzanine over the main floor, firing their guns into the concrete ceiling. That doesn't seem like a very good idea at all.
The guard posted outside Kiefer's holding room is hollering into his walkie-talkie for backup, but the only response he's getting is from the other side of the door. "Listen to me! CTU is under attack!" yells Kiefer. Thanks for the update.
Meanwhile, the commandos are taking control of the floor, telling everyone to get down on it.
Kiefer finally persuades the freaked-out guard to open the door, and tells him that they're cut off from the main floor. He adds that they need to get to the lounge to look after the civilians there, and asks for a weapon. Wait, how's Kiefer going to get up there if he's got some Redshirt slowing him down? That question is answered when the guard drops, shot dead by a Chinese commando at the end of the hall. The shooter didn't see Kiefer because Kiefer was still in the room, so he kicks his way into the first room in the hall rather than immediately coming after Kiefer. Kiefer takes the opportunity to relieve the dead guard of his gun. I expect Kiefer to haul the guard inside the room by his feet, but instead, he lies on the floor to disarm the body. That way, when the commando comes back out and starts shooting again, the bullets hit the corpse instead of Kiefer. Who then shoots the commando, as well as a second one who's just appeared behind a glass wall at the far end of the hallway. His accuracy isn't so great, though, because he emptied the automatic taking out just two guys. Slowing down, are we? Kiefer takes the dead guard's spare clip, loads it into the gun, and moves down the hallway.
Out on the main floor, Zhao is making everyone give up their cell phones, in the unlikely event that someone in this highly secure government fortress gets the idea to call 911. He also tells one of his men to turn off the alarm. At 2:44:45, Kiefer is still loose in the hallways when he hears single shots nearby that indicate the sound of the mopping-up stage. Then he takes out another unsuspecting bad guy from beneath a staircase, and a fourth from his position of cover. Then he takes the huge machine gun off the third guy he killed this hour. Now he has a machine gun. Ho ho ho.
Out on the floor, Zhao is demanding to know who's in command. Nobody answers. Just as Nadia's finding enough courage to get to her feet, Milo calls out, "I am." As he stands, Nadia turns and shakes her head at him, like, "Didn't you see Passenger 57? The correct answer is, 'You are'!" Milo tells Zhao, "Milo Pressman. I'm acting director of CTU." "Come here," says Zhao. Milo slowly heads over. And then Zhao shoots Milo in the center of the forehead. Nadia watches in horror as Milo body hits the floor. It's 2:45:48, and I can't decide how to end this paragraph. I'll leave it up to you.
2:50:14. From his hiding place on the mezzanine, Kiefer watches as the commandos herd more hostages onto the floor below. Nadia's kneeling sadly in front of Milo's corpse. Kiefer looks irritated that he even bothered to save the life of someone who had less than twelve hours to live anyway.
In the lounge, Marilyn's trying to get someone on the phone and not having any better luck than anyone else. Then she and Josh look through the glass door and see the commandos coming toward them down the hall. Marilyn gets Josh to help her push the couch against the door, but the commandos quickly shove their way inside anyway. Nice try, Marilyn, but that couch was (a) light enough for the two of you to move easily, (b) waist-high and therefore not an effective barrier behind a glass door, and (c) ugly. The commandos order Marilyn and Josh onto the floor, and one of them says over his earpiece, "We found Bauer. The boy's with his mother." Wait, what? Zhou tells the guy to bring Josh and Marilyn to the main floor. The Bauers are being herded out, but they don't get far before Kiefer shoots their captors right off them. Panicked, Marilyn asks Kiefer what the bad guys want with Josh. "What do you mean, Josh?" Kiefer asks, honestly confused. Me, too. I thought they were after Morris, hoping to get him to fix the sub-circuit board. Then he could refuse to cooperate this time and have himself a little redemption arc or possibly a hero's death, but I guess not. Better luck time, Morris. Kiefer swallows his amazement and tells Josh and Marilyn that they have to go.
Kiefer starts leading Josh and Marilyn through the hallways and catacombs of CTU, his gun leveled the whole time. In this context, you really get to appreciate how much CTU looks like a level of the game Half-Life, except with fewer headcrabs. This episode could use some headcrabs. As they quietly make their way across a catwalk at 2:51:46, Kiefer is unaware that some patrolling commandos are not far behind, although they're not yet in sight. Kiefer leads them into a utility room and has Marilyn shut the door behind them. This room conveniently has access to a large ventilation duct that's blocked only by a slowly turning fan -- not even a grate or anything. Kiefer jams his machine gun in between the blades, and tells Josh to crawl up through and inside, promising that he and Marilyn will be right behind. Kiefer's just helping Marilyn up into the duct when three bad guys burst in. This time Kiefer uses up all of his ammo without hitting anyone at all, and so he and Marilyn get taken prisoner. The commando tells Zhao over his earpiece that Josh got away, but they still have Marilyn and Kiefer. Zhao wants the other two commandos to bring the prisoners to the floor while the third commando waits there for Josh.
Meanwhile, Josh reaches a Y-junction in the ventilation tunnel and freezes, wondering what to do . My theory that Cheng wants Josh because he's secretly a genius who can fix the component just went down the shitter.
Down on the floor, Zhao tells his tech support guy to shut down the ventilation system and put him on the PA. While he's waiting, he reports to Cheng that they lost Josh. "Get the boy back!" Cheng barks. "I don't care what you have to do!" Zhou's tech support guy says that they're getting another call from Doyle, and that he thinks it would probably be a good idea to answer this time. Zhao goes to a computer screen and calls out, "Nadia Yassir!" Nadia can't hide behind Milo this time, and not just because he's dead. So, after a pause, she weakly hauls herself to her feet, walks around the pool of Milo's cranial blood on the floor, and goes to Zhao. He asks her if she's the ranking officer, like the roster says. Nadia admits it. Zhao tells her to answer Doyle's call and say that there's been a problem with the communications system. And, of course, if she tries to warn Doyle, he'll kill everyone in the room, starting with Nadia. I suppose it would be too much to ask for him to start with his own guys. Her eyes locked on Zhao's, Nadia answers and tells an impatient (if not suspicious) Doyle that they're having problems with comm. She lies that they haven't gotten a lead on Cheng's position yet. Doyle bitches that all she had to do was reposition some satellites. Her voice thin with stress, Nadia says, "As soon as we get a visual on Cheng's vehicle we'll let you know." At 2:55:42, Doyle is like, "Okay, thanks." He hangs up. He totally knows.
Nadia also hangs up and looks at Zhao, who tells her to resume her seat. She goes back to sitting to her dead not-boyfriend. The group of commandos holding Marilyn and Kiefer arrives, putting them with the rest of the hostages. Kiefer demands, "What do you want with the boy? Who sent you?" That gets him a gun-butt to the kidney as Zhao tells him that he doesn't ask the questions: "If he makes another move, shoot him." Kiefer lies gasping on the floor like he just got his last rib broken, which is entirely possible. Finally, Zhao gets to talk to Josh on the PA, like he's been wanting to for a couple of minutes. And it's exactly what you expect: he gives Josh ten seconds to show himself, or his mother dies. Josh takes about one second to decide to go back. There's an allegedly tense count to ten, with Zhao's gun leveled at Marilyn's cringing face, and about forty different crazy-making edits. Josh makes it out of the vent just in time, and Zhao's man in the ventilation room reports that he's bringing Josh down to the floor. Zhao reports to Cheng that they have Josh, and Cheng orders Josh brought to him. "Put her with the others," Zhao says of Marilyn. She gets dumped in a chair right to the body of the man who saved her life earlier. Primo real estate, that spot.
Splitscreen time. Along with the hostages at CTU, we see the Veep glowering quietly to himself while Lisa lies naked on top of her boyfriend, having what must be the worst sex ever. Nothing fancy, since there was all that editing just a moment ago. And then it ends with Josh being led into the main floor with everyone else. Kiefer watches the unhappy mother-and-child reunion from his spot in the floor.
Cheng's on the phone with someone. Who could it be? Well, since we hear him saying, "My men have your grandson," it's kind of a giveaway that he's talking to Kiefer's dad. On a cell phone of his own, Dad asks Cheng how Josh is. "Physically unharmed" is the answer. Cheng adds that Marilyn and Kiefer are also alive: "The codes you provided gave us full access to CTU's security system." He asks whether Dad has finished repairing the Russian nuke component. "Almost," Dad breezes, standing over the guy who's doing the actual work. It looks like they're in an office that's been shut down for the night. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that it's actually Dad's office, and it would surprise me even less to learn that CTU hasn't bothered to have the building staked out. "I'll refit it when you bring me my grandson," Dad promises. They agree to meet at "the rendezvous point" in twenty minutes. "Call me when I can talk to the boy," Dad adds. "Will do," says Cheng. Aren't they friendly-friendly? They both hang up dramatically. Which only means that they're going to be on the phone with each other again the time we see them. It's 3:00:00.