Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | 1 USERS: C- YOU GRADE IT Women's Work
By M. Giant | Season 8 | Episode 13 | Aired on 03.22.2010
As Kiefer drives into the apparently abandoned dock area, which is a wide-open courtyard surrounded by darkened warehouses and crane towers, Cole is scanning everything from the shotgun seat with an infrared scope. A blink-and-you-miss-it red flash in the green display tweaks Cole's antennae, and Kiefer decides they should contact the NYPD and the NSA. But as Kiefer brings the CTUmobile to a stop, neither of them can get their cell phones to work. Kiefer realizes someone's jamming their phones, which can't be a good sign. "They're here, dammit," he says. Instead of being happy that they found the bad guys, he throws the truck into reverse. That's when the bad guys open fire. The CTUmobile is surrounded, with shooters firing at them from ground level and up high. Looks like a lot more than three of them, too. While reversing wildly, Kiefer loses control of the SUV and it jinks around in half of a J-turn, skidding to a stop nose-out against a warehouse wall, in an alcove formed by two shipping containers. Lucky, that, because the engine knocks to a stop, signaling that the CTUmobile is staying right where it is. Kiefer tells Owen and King in the back seat to hand up their assault rifles, and he and Cole jump out to start returning fire while Kiefer tells them to get ready to break open the arsenal in back. Everyone moves, and it's a full-on firefight. Except something's wrong, because Kiefer doesn't seem to be hitting anyone. Must be a solar flare or a magnetic disturbance or something. Meanwhile, from their relatively safe position at the dock, Samir figures they must have followed them from the vault. Over the noise of the gunfire, Kiefer calls out to Cole to scope out the snipers with the infrared. "Ten o'clock high and low!" Cole yells over the gunfire. Kiefer shoots at, and misses, both. Cole might as well be saving the batteries on that scope. Peeking out with his own infrared scope, Ali counts four agents, and recognizes one from the hospital as the one who talked down Marcos a couple of hours ago. Tarin takes a look for himself and says dramatically, "That's Jack Bauer. Ex-CTU. He was one of their best agents." As Owen and King join the battle with weapons pulled from the truck, Samir points out there's nothing keeping him and Tarin from blowing this pop stand with the rods, "As long as we're certain Bauer and his men cannot warn anyone." Ali's taken care of that, too, jamming their communications. This Ali has thought of everything. He deserves a promotion, except for that thing where he almost let Farhad escape earlier. Satisfied that Kiefer and his team won't be getting out of here alive, Samir and Tarin dash for the boat. Somehow when they jump in, their added weight doesn't capsize the already overladen craft. While Kiefer reloads, Cole can see through the infrared scope that two men are leaving. "One of them's Tarin Faroush. They're carrying a box the right size and shape of the rods, Jack!" Kiefer breaks cover long enough to send a burst of gunfire out over the river, but they're out of range. Kiefer says they have to notify NYPD, but not only are their cell phones dead, Owen can't get through on any radio frequencies, either. Kiefer spots a red call box on the side of a warehouse way across the lot. When Cole wonders how they're going to get to it, across fifty yards of open ground, Kiefer hollers back that they can pull the armor panels out of the CTUmobile to use as cover. "Owen, King! Start now!" The firefight rages on as the ads hit at 4:12:25, and somewhere Stephen King's son Owen enjoys his little shout-out.
One of the act-in splitscreen windows at 4:16:43 shows Owen and King busily tearing out the roof upholstery on the CTUmobile while bullets ricochet around them. Inside CTU, Arlo is giving Hastings a casualty report: three deaths inside the tunnel from the blast, plus an Agent McCallan was burned in an electrical fire and had to be transferred to a hospital. Also, there's flooding, which I guess is a danger when you build your highly secret facility underground and six inches from the river. "The pumps are down and certain sections of the basement have about six inches of water," Arlo says. Which means it's only a matter of time before Kevin and Nick wash up in the deep storage room or something. Hastings asks half-seriously if they're all going to drown. When Arlo says they're working on it, Hastings asks for another update in twenty minutes. I guess Arlo doesn't have anything else he needs to do right now other than put together thrice-hourly updates anyway. Then a woman shows up at Hastings' elbow to tell him the NSA is there. Hastings looks about as happy to hear that as anyone ever is.
Hastings makes his way to the bombed-out tunnel to introduce himself to Frank Haynam, who in turn says he's the senior engineer at NSA's New York Field office. He's there to help, having brought his best men. Not just the best men he could get out of bed on ten minutes' notice? He wants to know where the server room is. Hastings says he'll get his people and they can work on it together. But Haynam declines, saying he'd rather work with his own guys. "There's no one more familiar with this facility than my crew," Hastings bristles. "Not exactly true. I was part of the group that helped design this place," says the guy who just asked where the fucking server room was. "Can't say I'm thrilled with what you've done with it," he adds. Unamused, Hastings asks how the NSA heard about this in the first place. Haynam says it was a call from Kiefer, but they haven't been able to call him back. Hastings leads him inside at 4:18:32.
Dana gets up from her desk to ask Chloe what she's doing instead of writing her damage assessment like she's supposed to be. Chloe thinks she might have a way to get things back up and running. Dana wonders how. "I haven't figured it out yet and I won't if you keep talking to me," Chloe bitches. Dana is still standing there looking like she got slapped with a wet toilet brush when Hastings enters to introduce Haynam to everyone as the guy who's going to get things working again. "They also brought along a fresh batch of cell phones," Hastings adds as a tech puts a case down on a desk. That'll be great, after everyone spends the whole rest of this hour getting each other's new numbers. Hastings gives a little pep talk before sending the NSA team on down to the server room. Chloe waylays Hastings, wondering about Kiefer. Hastings tells her what Haynam told him, but it's not enough for Chloe, who wants Hastings to send out a search party. Hastings says he wouldn't know where to start even if he had the resources, which he doesn't. "He's our best chance of stopping the attack," Chloe argues, just so we know she's not only worried about her friend. Hastings says they'll find him after they get up and running again. "If anyone can take care of themselves, it's Jack," he says. Hard cheese for Owen and King, though. He sends her to the server room to help Haynam. Before going, she grabs a cell phone from the NSA nerd with the clipboard who's been handing them out and storms away before he can write anything down. Take that, NSA!
Haynam has done a lightning-quick assessment and is already yanking components out of the servers, telling his underlings that 90 percent of them are fried (the components, that is, not his underlings, although they might be forgiven for feeling that way at 4:20 in the morning) and everything's going to have to be swapped out. Chloe comes in to offer her help, as instructed, but he brusquely says they're good. They technobabble about his plan of attack, which she thinks is going to take too long. He tries again to dismiss her, but she floats her own idea: "Why not tap directly into the trunk line." "Because I'm not insane?" Haynam says. Oh, there's the problem: Chloe kind of is. She says her plan could be a whole lot faster, and he says it could make things worse. "How could things be any worse?" Chloe wonders. Haynam says she could cause an overload, electrocute herself, and start a fire. And we wou