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While Tony and the Faux-yer are getting their canister ready and Jibraan in place to deliver it, Kiefer tortures Tony's phone number out of the goon Hamid wounded at the end of the last hour. Before boarding the Metro, Jibraan tries to ask a transit cop for help, but he turns out to be on Tony's payroll. They're everywhere! Olivia meets with Martin, who says he gave the hit man the go-ahead to kill Hodges even when the funds weren't transferred, and she needs to get her shit together before she blows everything. She does so long enough to sell Aaron a convincing lie about why she left, but Aaron's not convinced; he wants Ethan to come back and help him access the voice-activated recordings from Olivia's office. In between sniping at each other, Chloe and Janis back at FBI-DC lead Kiefer to Tony, then hack into Tony's Jibraan-tracking software to establish Washington Center as the target, and put Kiefer's voice in Jibraan's earpiece. With Kiefer's help, Jibraan gets the canister to the surface and Kiefer gets it into containment seconds before it goes off. The end!
Except not. Spawn's got a stalker while she waits for her flight, so she makes friends with some fellow travelers. But Spawn being Spawn, her stalker is just an agent Kiefer sent to watch over her, who gets killed by one of Spawn's new friends. Who is working for the Faux-yer, who plans to use Spawn has leverage to force Kiefer to bust Tony out of custody. And it looks like Kiefer's going to do it. Oh, Spawn.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Tonight in the previouslies freeze-frames: Kim Bauer, Olivia Taylor, Tony Almeida, and Jack Bauer. Which is not very many considering how long these previouslies are.
Finally, we're into the show. The Faux-yer is on her cell phone to Alan Wilson, watching the goings-on in the containment chamber she's standing outside and relaying them to Wilson: "The canister's being retrofitted to maximize dispersion. We're on target to release the bioweapon at Washington Central Station within the hour." As for my concerns in last week's recap that setting it off in a subway station is the terror-attack equivalent of a fart in a jar, she claims that the station's ventilation system will circulate it. "Between eight and ten thousand commuters will be exposed." As long as they start their days really early. Wilson asks about Al-Zarian, who the Faux-yer assures him is behaving and largely ignorant of the details of what they're trying to do. After they hang up, the hazmat-suited guy working in the containment chamber squirts a few puffs of vapor out of the canister and reports, "The trigger mechanism's working." But how much pathogen did he just release to test that? Perhaps the estimate should be lowered to six or seven thousand.
Inside that parked van where Tony took Jibraan last hour, he rigs him with an earpiece/homing device. Jibraan again asks what's expected of him, and Tony tells him to just get on the subway and ride the Red Line to Washington Center. Jibraan, no dummy, has figured out by now that he's going to be blamed for something, so Tony reminds him about Hamid. "You do something stupid, and he dies. Badly." He repeats the instructions and helps Jibraan out of the van, then sends him walking to the subway entrance to the "Woodward Metro Station" on the corner. Jibraan gives Tony one last hangdog look and descends. Tony climbs back into the van and fires up a little JPS device (that's my abbreviation for "Jibraan Positioning System"). I never understand why people on this show always wait until the target leaves before making sure the tracking works. One day someone's going to forget to turn something on and end up feeling really stupid.
The Faux-yer throws on a heavy black wig and a pair of nerdy-babe glasses, because in addition to being a bad-ass freelance covert operative, she's also a big Alias fan. She then pops the rigged canister into a nice, sturdy duffel bag. Good thing they spent all that time working on the canister to "maximize dispersion." Now even the hidden interior pocket will be fully exposed.At Jibraan's apartment, Kiefer apologetically uncuffs Hamid and promises to find his brother. Then he returns to the other room, where the goon Hamid stabbed in the neck is lying on Jibraan's dining room table. Kiefer suggests that Gohar, the imam who's now inside the apartment, but just standing around doing nothing, go to the other room to have a talk with Hamid, mainly because he wants him out of there for what's about to happen. As for the small army of FBI agents it took to bust in here, it looks like they've already cleared out. Kiefer crosses to Walker and says Hamid doesn't know anything. "Right now, he's our only lead," Kiefer says, indicating the wounded and bloodied man lying behind him. Uh-oh. Dude, the only worse thing to be on this show than a Handsome Black Agent is Kiefer's Only Lead. That EMT who's been following Kiefer around all day is back again, and we get a glimpse at his nametag, "Waltrip," which explains how he's been able to keep up with our hero all day. He's about to give Kiefer's Only Lead some morphine, but Kiefer roughly jerks the hand with the syringe away and pushes the paramedic back. He's going to put someone's eye out like that, but at least it'll be painless. Kiefer then pulls the rough rag-bandage away from the man's seeping wound and invites Walker to leave the room. "Do what you need to do," she says. Kiefer asks the man about the target and Tony's whereabouts, and when KOL claims not to know, Kiefer sticks a thumb in his neck-hole for him. Oddly, his screaming doesn't bring the imam running from the other room. Kiefer seems to believe the man when he says he can't answer Kiefer's questions, but when he also denies having a way to contact Tony, the thumb goes in again. Finally KOL admits to having a phone number. "But I'm not supposed to use it unless there's a problem." Oh, okay, let's wait for one to arise, then. Kiefer gets KOL's phone from the other paramedic, and gives the EMT Waltrip permission to drug him "enough to take the pain out of his voice. Nothing more." That's a very precise dosage. He hands his phone to Walker so she can call Chloe and have her set up a trace. While he's waiting on that, he warns KOL not to mess with him. Otherwise he'll have Waltrip give him just enough morphine to make him impotent, or something.
Back at FBI-DC, Janis answers Walker's call, and offers to do the trace instead of Chloe. "Jack asked for Chloe to run point on this," Walker says. Sitting to Janis and listening in on the extension, Chloe tips the crushed Janis a smug smile and gets the number from Walker. Then she starts technobabbling with Janis, but also browbeating her over her technological inferiority. "It's obvious I'll never be able to do things as well as you did at CTU," Janis finally says. "All I ask is that you not make me feel like a idiot while you're pointing that out." "All right," Chloe lies. By now the trace is ready. While Kiefer holds his own phone to his ear so he can be on with Chloe, he has KOL recite Tony's number for him. Kiefer dials it on KOL's phone and then holds it to the man's ear. Try not to get blood on it, Kiefer.
When Tony answers the call (rather rudely, I'd say), KOL spins a story about one of the bank transfers on Jibraan's account not going through. "Are you getting this?" Walker asks Chloe from across the room. Luckily, Tony doesn't hear her. Chloe says she's running into some kind of block on Tony's phone. Tony, meanwhile, tells KOL to call someone to fix the transfer and asks, "Any other problems?" "No," the guy says, because Kiefer trained him well. End of call. The bad news is that all Chloe had time to find out is that Tony's somewhere in the Adams Morgan district, and she doesn't know how long it'll take her to do all the technobabbling necessary to narrow it down. Kiefer's frustrated with her being such an American't, and tells Janis to call Metro PD to get Hazmat and Tactical to the Adams Morgan district. Where, I presume, they'll just sort or circle around. Kiefer and Walker leave Jibraan's apartment in a hurry.
At 5:10:52, Jibraan makes his way through the subway station. Before approaching the ticket booth, however, he takes out the earpiece. "I need you to call the police," he quietly tells the disinterested female vendor behind the ticket window. She's not so much alarmed as annoyed and confused by the crazy Middle-Eastern-looking man, even when he looks significantly at his closed fist and says, "They're listening." She starts to look like she's taking him more seriously as Jibraan explains, as quickly as he can, that terrorists have his brother and want him to get on the train. Finally she waves over a Nebraska farm boy of a transit cop waiting nearby, and Jibraan lets the officer guide him off to one side. Jibraan starts to explain again about his brother being held hostage, and the cop says, "Put the earpiece back in." Okay, that's kind of awesome. They're everywhere! Jibraan replaces the earpiece, and Tony's not as mad as you might think once he's back in Jibraan's ear. "Listen, Jibraan, I understand that you had to try. But don't do it again. Your brother's life depends on it." A thoroughly defeated Jibraan promises to be good from now on, and remembers his instructions. "We'll be watching," Tony reminds him. "We're always watching." With that, the transit cop hands Jibraan a DC Metro Pass card. I like that extra touch of implied omnipotence, but whether the cop's dirty or just
an imposter, he'd better hope he's not in view of a security camera right now. Jibraan slouches through the turnstile at 5:13:03.
5:17:25. Olivia is loitering in a park when Aaron calls on her cell phone, sounding pissed and wondering where the hell she is. "Secretary Woods is asking for you." Tim's the Secretary of Homeland? I thought he was just some liaison. Of course, field promotions aren't unheard of on this show, but normally we get to see how they come about. Anyway, Olivia stalls by asking what Tim wants, and Aaron tells him that the Justice Department is looking into Hodges's murder, and they want internet and phone records, as well as interviews with everyone. "Apparently there were only eleven people who knew Hodges was alive," Aaron explains, sounding pretty in the know for a Secret Service guard. "It stands to reason that information was leaked." Yeah, maybe time Olivia calls in a hit she'll want to make sure she's part of a larger pool of potential suspects. Olivia promises to hurry back, but Aaron isn't satisfied. "Where are you?" he asks with uncharacteristic directness. Olivia claims it's a personal errand, but Aaron isn't mollified. Still, Olivia has the nerve to ask him to cover for her until she returns. Aaron reluctantly agrees. I'm not so mad at Olivia for killing Hodges, who obviously needed it, but possibly getting Aaron in trouble like this is beyond the pale.
Olivia hangs up, and Martin shows up about three seconds later, still calmly telling her to chill out. She tells him what's going on back at the White House. "Okay, did you think no one would bat an eye when a government witness was murdered?" Martin asks. Olivia reminds Martin that she changed her mind, and didn't make the transfer, and she thought that would effectively call it off. Except, as Martin explains, the hit man called Martin. "He called me and told me the money hadn't come through yet. I told him you were good for it and to proceed." So there goes my theory that it was actually The Group behind it. My bad. I shouldn't have guessed something that complicated this late in the season. Anyway, Olivia demands to know why, and Martin says they didn't have much time, and because that's what Olivia wanted. "Despite all my warnings for you to reconsider, you looked me straight in the eye and you said you wanted Hodges dead." Horrified, Olivia starts talking about her phone records and computer. Martin tells her not to worry about the calls, and promises to send her "a program" to clean her internet records, which I don't know how that's going to work if she was almost certainly on the White House network. He also says it's too late for her to grow a conscience now. "You let this eat away at you, people are going to notice and get suspicious. You will bring us both down, destroy your mother, and her administration." So relax! He promises it'll blow over if she follows his instructions. The last thing he tells her is to transfer the funds to the hit man. "You do not want this man unhappy with you," he warns. Yeah, he'll totally sandbag your eBay user rating.
Walking through the airport with her rolling suitcase, Spawn calls home, but at least she didn't wake the boyfriend, who's been up with the kid anyway. "She misses her mother." "Aw," Spawn says unconvincingly, and quickly moves on to say her flight was delayed by an hour or two. He suggests that maybe this is a sign to stick around and spend some more time with Kiefer. She points out that she's not welcome, and he promises to pick her up at the airport when she gets home. Her phone is starting to make a low-battery noise, so she quickly wraps up the call. I know how that is. Maybe she has a phone charger with her and maybe she doesn't, but either way, plugging a phone in at an airport is always such an awkward affair. And we'd hate to see Spawn lose her dignity. After hanging up, she looks around and spots a dude staring at her. He turns away, and Spawn runs into another traveler, who's actually quite friendly about it, especially for someone who's in an airport at stupid o'clock in the morning. Spawn apologizes and goes to sit down.
Jibraan sits alone on the train, while the Faux-yer makes her way up through the car. As the PA announces an upcoming stop at L Street, she opens the bag, reaches in to activate the timer on the canister for 15 minutes, and kicks the bag under a seat. Then she gets off at the stop, walking past Jibraan's window as she goes. He doesn't fail to notice, but he doesn't move or say anything, either. "stop, Washington Center," the PA says. "stop will be the last stop." Could you say that with a little more finality? Walking down the platform, the Faux-yer tells Tony through her own earpiece that "The package is in place." Tony says he'll pick her up at 22nd, and gets behind the wheel of the van to pull away from the curb at 5:23:26.
Just in time, Chloe has managed to hack Tony's phone block, and even though he's not on his phone any more, it's still giving her real-time updates on Tony's location. She calls Kiefer to tell him, and guides him toward Tony while Janis gives the order for teams to move in. I don't know why Walker's letting Kiefer drive when he could still go spazzmatoid on her at any moment and wrap them around a national monument. Tony's black van pulls out of the intersection ahead of Kiefer, who says, "We can't let this turn into a pursuit. Hold on." With that, he rear-ends Tony's van right off the road, then backs into it, pushing it up on the sidewalk. Tony spills out of the driver's seat, his JPS clattering to the floor to him. As Kiefer and the converging cops roll up and pull him out, Kiefer sees the device and tells the cops about it while hauling Tony away and applying one of his patented sleeper holds. Except this one is a bit modified from the usual, because instead of saying, "Don't fight it" in the middle of it, he tells an officer, "Lock down this piece of crap" after he's done. It's a lot less friendly that way. He goes over to Walker, who hands him the JPS with its screen now cracked and dark. Kiefer tells her to have Chloe get on it while he searches the van for the canister. Before climbing in, he fights off another attack of the twitchies. It's 5:24:52.
At 5:29:14, Chloe is on the phone to Kiefer and Walker, who have Tony's JPS plugged into a laptop. She's telling them it's too damaged for her to do anything with it. "Do me a favor, send me your screen," Janis says to Chloe. "Why?" Chloe demands. "Why not?" Janis shoots back. Chloe complies, and Janis says she can "reconstruct the technobabble of the technobabble at the time it was damaged." Chloe says it can't be done. "Really?" Janis says with sarcastic sweetness. Oh, it's on. Or at least it will be on, after Janis succeeds in turning it on.
An officer comes over to tell Kiefer that Tony's awake again. Kiefer goes over to where Tony's sitting handcuffed on the front stoop of an apartment building and tells Moran, the Field Ops guy, "I need you to walk away." After a moment, he and his men do, so now Kiefer's alone with Tony. He launches the interview by socking him one in the mush and demanding, "Where is it? Where is the canister?" Tony's not talking, so Kiefer keeps hitting him. After ten punches in quick succession, Kiefer pathetically asks, "Why did you betray me?" All about Kiefer, again. When there's still no answer, Kiefer pulls his gun and puts it to Tony's forehead. "I have nothing left to lose," he says. "You either tell me where that canister is or so help me God I will lay you down right here right now." Tony finally responds by suggesting that he doesn't have much to lose either. "Do it." Bluff called. Tony wins again.
Except that over at the laptop, Janis has just sent Walker a live feed of a red locator blip traveling though an unlabeled map of D.C. "And they just went right through St. Matthew's Cathedral and out the other side," Janis adds. Walker realizes that's the Metro. Chloe throws a subway map overlay up on the screen and says it's the Red Line, terminus Washington Center. So Walker runs over to
Kiefer, who's still busy staring sadly at Tony, and says they have to go now. Kiefer leaves with her, but not before she pauses to give Tony a hateful look of her own.
At 5:32:16, Jibraan is still riding the train, seemingly unaware that a beefy, bespectacled white guy in a suit has noticed his presence. That guy's either also on The Group's payroll or he just doesn't like nervous-looking Middle Eastern commuters.
As Kiefer and Walker pull out in a fresh sedan, Kiefer again at the wheel, Walker tells him Jibraan is en route to Washington Center. Through his comm earpiece to Chloe, Kiefer asks how long they have, and it's not long. He has them scan frequencies that Tony could have used with Jibraan over earpieces -- basically anything strong enough to penetrate into the subway -- and when Janis finds one, Kiefer has them "patch me through." Just like that, Kiefer's voice is in Jibraan's ear. He introduces himself and reports, "Your brother is safe. I'm working with the FBI." Jibraan wants to talk to Hamid, but Kiefer can't help him there. "Your brother is safe, but you are not. The people who are doing this? They gave you some kind of a package." Kiefer is confused when Jibraan denies it, as Walker's laptop now shows a live video feed of the subway station in the moments before the train is due to pull in. Kiefer figures out that it's hidden on the train somewhere, and tells Jibraan to start looking for an abandoned package. Jibraan doesn't see anything from where he's sitting, but he tells Kiefer about spotting the Faux-yer on the train earlier. By now the train is pulling into the station. Kiefer tells Jibraan to stay on the train when everyone else gets off. That dude with the suit and glasses is now looking at Jibraan more intently, which Jibraan probably isn't helping by talking to an invisible friend. But when the train stops, the suspicious commuter gets off with everyone else. While Jibraan hangs back, Jibraan asks Kiefer if he's looking for a bomb. "It's a biological weapon," Kiefer answers. "If it goes off a lot of people are gonna die." He doesn't mention that Jibraan will be the first. Once he's alone on the train, Jibraan begins a frantic search under the seats, and soon finds the abandoned duffel. "I need you to open it," Kiefer says. Jibraan asks why, and when he balks, Kiefer says, "Right now you're the only person who can, and if you don't, thousands of people are gonna die." He repeats the request, and into the long pause, he says, "Look, I know I'm asking you a lot. Please." Finally Jibraan opens it and sees the canister inside. "It looks like a bomb. I see a light." He slides the cover away from the digital readout, which is helpfully counting down. "One minute, eighteen seconds," Jibraan tells Kiefer. Good thing the Faux-yer didn't stick it in the bag timer side down, huh? Kiefer says that's not enough time for them to get to him, and tells Jibraan to get up to the surface as fast as he can. "I'll meet you on the street. We're about a minute out." Cutting it close, are we?
Jibraan gets off the train cradling the open duffel, gingerly at first, then running up the escalator and knocking people down. On the upper level, the suspicious commuter points him out to another transit cop, who blocks Jibraan' s path and asks what's in the bag. Jibraan so doesn't have time for this, but fortunately he remembers that he just happens to be holding something that could be quite handy for clearing out a subway station. Dropping the bag, he holds the canister aloft, shouting, "I have a bomb, okay?" Suddenly, with all the commuters screaming and running away, he's got a clear path to the street. The second he reaches the sidewalk, cop cars come screaming around the corner, and a whole platoon of gas-masked FBI agents come running towards him on foot. The few seconds could go very badly for Jibraan, but luckily Kiefer jumps out of his car almost before it stops and shouts, "Wait, he's with us!" Kiefer runs up to Jibraan and takes the canister. "Go with these men, they'll help you. Go!" As Jibraan is led away, Kiefer runs with the canister into a conveniently parked hazmat van and tosses it into a Plexiglas containment chamber, where it hits the floor at exactly the moment the stopwatch function on my cell phone tells me it should be going off. But apparently there is a grace period of about a second and a half, because Kiefer has time to slide the door shut and fall against the far wall before the canister erupts in a flash and a plume of vapor. Kiefer watches it for a second, probably thinking how much nicer this is than that faculty refrigerator he had to use last time, and taps on the door to be let out of the van. The hazmat-suited guy outside tells him, "We've got it from here, sir." Sure, now that the hard part is over.
Kiefer goes back out to thank Jibraan for doing a great job and to tell him Hamid will be brought there, but first he wants him to give his statement to Agent Moran, waiting at his side. When Jibraan steps aside to follow Moran, he reveals Walker, who's standing some distance behind him and looking at Kiefer with a complicated expression. Kiefer smiles a bit and goes over to her, then half-collapses against the car. When she tells him to take a shot, he says he gave himself one twenty minutes ago. "It's not working." "It's okay," Walker says. "We stopped it. You can finally rest." How encouraging. She holds him, all the way into the ticking clock at 5:38:04. You think they're having sex during the commercials? Maybe if he starts his convulsions right at the end there it could be really hot.
At 5:42:32, Spawn sits at her gate, trying to sneakily glance over to see if her stalker's still around. He is, but at least now he's sitting at a table in the food court and not openly staring at her. Spawn looks over at the woman she bumped into earlier, now sitting nearby and bickering with her tweedy, longhaired husband over the D.C. Times. Very worked up over a fake newspaper. She goes over and sits to the woman and across from her husband. They make a little small talk, and Spawn asks the woman to look behind them and see if her stalker's still there. "He was staring at me earlier," Spawn explains. "Well, you're very pretty," the woman smiles, and says that the guy is getting up and leaving now. She doesn't mention that he's also on his phone. She's also leaving out a few other relevant facts, but we'll get to that later.
"I've got her in sight. She's waiting at the gate now," the stalker says into his phone. "Should begin boarding within the hour." Who's he talking to? Well, Kiefer, of all people, who in this crisis has taken the time and FBI resources to put a tail on his daughter to "watch over her," at least until she's on the plane home. Yeah, that's not creepy at all. After hanging up, Kiefer tells Moran to have the FBI ready with a "full interrogation package" when they get there with Tony. Yeah, Kiefer? This is the FBI you're working with, not CTU. Kiefer's going to be pissed when he walks into that room with Tony and there's nothing in it but a bright light and a tape recorder. He then takes a moment to share a long look with Tony, now waiting in the back of a parked car. Walker interrupts their moment by coming up and telling him, "Jonas Hodges was killed with a car bomb less than an hour ago." "What? How?" Uh, a car bomb, genius. Walker thinks The Group found out Hodges was alive, which Kiefer interprets to mean that Tony is the target, so they'll need to lock him down tight. "We're not losing him again." He's not done staring at him, after all.
Among the crowd of looky-loos outside the police cordon is none other than the Faux-yer, again on the phone to Wilson. "The FBI located Al-Zarian. There was nothing we could do," she excuses. Well, she could have set the timer for 14:57, maybe. Wilson's not happy to hear the canister was lost. "Without that pathogen, everything we've worked for is finished." Okay, so maybe that's a blessing in disguise, you think? Maybe it's a sign that perhaps your project shouldn't be dependent on illegally developed and acquired weapons of mass destruction? I'm just saying. Try taking over the country with something a little less dangerous time, like maybe ceramics. The Faux-yer adds that Tony's in FBI custody, so Wilson wants him taken out ASAP. "He knows too much, Kara." Kara! We have a name! Not that I'm using it at this point.
She promises that there's no need to have Tony killed. "Trust me. We've got another play." "You better have," Wilson threatens.
At the airport, the gate agent announces that the plane is on its way. Spawn's new friend's husband, who's working really hard to be goofy with zero material, says he'll believe it when he sees it and offers to go for coffee. "Your husband's really nice," Spawn says when he's gone. "He has his moments," the woman agrees. Spawn asks her to watch her bag while she hits the restroom. That doesn't seem like it's in the interests of aviation security.
At 5:46:16, Spawn strolls down the crowded concourse. The FBI agent watches her go, checks his watch with concern, then goes into the men's room himself. Someone enters behind him and washes his hands, which is enough time for the agent to have completed the fastest pee ever. No wonder there are no bathroom breaks on this show; they happen so fast you practically have to freeze-frame to catch them. But when he comes back to the sink area, who should grab him from behind and start garroting him but the goofy husband of Spawn's new friend. Yeah, who's goofy now? Despite the crowds in the terminal outside, the bathroom stays empty enough for his assailant to drag him to the open stall of the far end of the bathroom, although he quickly gets impatient with the agent's lame attempts to grab his long hair, and snaps his neck. He pulls the body into the stall, closes the door and locks it from inside, then hops the wall into the adjoining stall and walks out like nothing happened besides his hair getting messed up. It's 5:47:33.
At 5:51:53, Olivia returns to her office to find Aaron standing outside it with his most severe look. Knowing she's n trouble, she addresses him as Agent Pierce and promises it won't happen again. "No, ma'am, it won't," Aaron says, "or you'll need to find someone else to do this job." He wants to know why she left, and Olivia gets emotional as she comes clean -- sort of: "Everything that's happened today -- being held hostage, Jonas Hodges's murder, and seeing my father so weak and vulnerable -- I was feeling overwhelmed. Aaron, I'm trying to live up to my mother's expectations. And I didn't want her, or anyone else for that matter, to know I was being affected by the pressure. I hope you can understand that." Aaron softens, and says he gets it, and asks if she's feeling all right now. Olivia says she is. "I guess I just needed to tell someone what was going on with me. I'm glad it was someone I could trust." Aaron thanks her, and opens the door for her. She thanks him right back before stepping inside.
But Aaron wasn't fished in, whatever his asymmetrical mouth might indicate. No sooner has he closed the door than he pulls out his cell phone and calls Ethan Kanin, directly, at 5:54:14. Ethan's reading his newspaper in an armchair in front of the cold fireplace when the phone rigs, and assures Aaron he didn't wake him. Aaron breathlessly asks Ethan about some "modifications to the Chief of Staff's office." He's referring to a voice-activated recording system. Sounds like Mike Novick's speed. Ethan says he used it too, and Aaron asks if it's still up and running, and how he can access the recordings. Ethan says his own thumbprint is required and says, "If you want my help, you're going to have to tell me what this is about." Aaron doesn't want to say on the phone, but Ethan promises to be at the White House within a half hour. By now, Ethan's had time to think about the circumstances under which he left. Yes, he resigned because he'd become a liability to the administration. But it's almost certainly occurred to him to think back to the likes of Tom Lennox, Walt Cummings, Wayne Palmer, and Mike Novick, and realize that being a liability is what White House Chiefs of Staff do. By that measure, Olivia's misdeeds probably land her squarely in the middle of the pack.
Inside that office, Olivia has the bank transfer window open again on her laptop. And in addition to being on the hook for a murder she decided she didn't want and now regrets, she's paying a quarter of a million dollars for the privilege. Talk about buyer's remorse.
At FBI-DC, Janis and Chloe are wrapping up some vital business, which is Janis trying to get Chloe to say something like, "Good job, Janis, on technobabbling the technobabble, or just maybe I should have considered the possibility that you might actually know what you're doing." Chloe explains, "You don't know me, but if you did, you would understand that this is the last place you should look for any type of validation." "How about just acknowledging you were wrong?" Janis snaps shrilly. Chloe doesn't bother replying -- by now, that photo of the Faux-yer from the White House security entrance is up on the screen, so she hits enter.
Back at the scene, Kiefer comes up to where Moran is showing Jibraan that photo on the laptop. He recognizes her, but describes what she was wearing when he last saw her. "Jibraan, your brother's here," Kiefer says. Moran must be like, "Thanks for interrupting my debrief, dude." Jibraan runs over to the SUV that's pulling up, which Hamid and Gohar are getting out of. The brothers hug, and Gohar gives Kiefer a grateful nod. Kiefer nods back, and allows himself a small smile as he turns away from the sight of the three men hugging. Kiefer couldn't even scare up one guy to hug right now; all his male friends are now either dead or evil.
At 5:57:16, the longhaired "husband" returns with a couple of paper coffee cups, claiming to have had to trek to the other end of the terminal. "But I want you to know...I got it," he says significantly to the woman. She thanks him, and they smile evilly at each other. He adjusts his open laptop computer, centering Spawn on the live feed from its webcam, a fact to which she is of course oblivious. As she is to everything, except what she ought to be.
Kiefer's phone rings, and it's the Faux-yer, driving along and saying she's sending his phone a link. "Something I think you should see." Kiefer asks what it is, but the only answer is "Open the link, Mr. Bauer." Kiefer does, and instead of an error message or disconnected call like what would happen in real life, there on his screen is the live video of Spawn, reading a magazine. Or, more likely, just looking at the pictures. "Who the hell is this?" Kiefer demands again. All she says is, "Your daughter is in the company of our operatives. Agent Franks has already been neutralized. You will help Tony Almeida escape or my people will murder your daughter. Any effort to contact her or warn anybody about this will have the same result." Kiefer says that's impossible. "Tony Almeida's already been secured. He's under heavy guard." "That's your problem," she says. She wants him to put her on his earpiece and keep the line open so she can listen. He obeys, as other split screen windows show Tony being escorted to an armored van, Ethan on the way back to the White House, and Spawn in her usual combined modes of deadly peril and utter ignorance.
Walker gets into the back of the van with a couple of other agents and sitting across from Tony, at whom she's glaring death-beams. "You're gonna pay for what you did to Larry," she vows. Tony all but rolls his eyes at her. Kiefer jumps in the back with them, and Walker says, "I thought you were going with Moran?" "Changed my mind," Kiefer "explains." "I want to see this through." As the van pulls out, he hears the Faux-yer say in his ear, "You're going to make your move to break Almeida out soon. I'm gonna tell you what to do and when to do it. Oh, and Mr. Bauer? If any of those agents in that van get in the way, you will have to eliminate them or your daughter will die." Even Walker? How many times is he going to have to kill that poor woman anyway? Tony just looks between them knowingly. It's 6:00:00.
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, follow him on Twitter, or just e-mail him at M.Giant[at]gmail.com.