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With CTU knocked out, the terrorists think they're free to carry the rods across the East River in a motorboat. That's the plan, anyway, but then Kiefer, Cole, Owen, and a CTU redshirt show up to engage them in a firefight. Tarin and Samir get away with the rods while Kiefer tries to figure out how to warn NYPD with all their communications being jammed. The only problem with his plan is that it counts on Owen and his fellow rookie sticking to it, which they don't, and both end up dead. Kiefer takes a few bullets himself, but fortunately Walker shows up and does with a handgun in thirty seconds what a heavily armed CTU squad couldn't manage all hour.
Meanwhile, NSA is called in to get CTU back up and running, and of course they're total dicks. Chloe locks horns with the head engineer on the best way to get things working again, and when they don't see it her way she takes over the repairs at gunpoint. When security busts in, she talks Hastings into letting her finish. Not only does it work, she doesn't get herself killed in the process.
Dana sends Prady packing, or so she thinks, but he wants to talk to Hastings. So she garrotes him and stuffs his body into a wall panel. If this doesn't exactly seem like a long-term solution to her problem, fear not; we then find out that she's been working with Samir this whole time. So clearly she's not a long-term type of girl after all.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!The previouslies freeze-frames feature Dana Walsh, Samir Mehran, Kayla Hassan, Jack Bauer, and CTU New York, the latter of which of course got knocked out by an electromagnetic pulse at the end of the last hour. But not to worry; Los Angeles recovered from an EMP attack in barely an hour just four seasons ago, without any help from Chloe. And hey, shouldn't there be a two-hour night of 24coming up, if the rest of the season is going to fit into the time between now and Memorial Day? I know I didn't sign up for a two-night, four-hour season finale.
From what's left of the CTU security tunnel, a phalanx of armored CTU agents enters with weapons at the ready. Thanks, guys. Where were you five minutes ago? The whole place is in chaos, of course, with battery-powered emergency lanterns being handed out and everything. Technology is the lifeblood of this place, and it's been pretty well exsanguinated. Chloe catches up with Hastings in the corridor to give him a damage report, which doesn't take long: everything's fried. End of report. Arlo adds his own good news, which is that they've lost contact with the aerial surveillance drones. The good news is that rather than just falling out of the sky, they'll go on autopilot and circle around until they run out of gas. "But we've lost all aerial surveillance and radiological detection capability?" Hastings asks. "Basically," Arlo says. Hastings assigns Arlo to find the agent who's leaving on foot to contact the outside world and tell him to have the FAA take care of getting the drones out before they crash into someone. I don't envy that agent. I even hate making office food runs, let alone being tasked with a list that includes flight plans. In the pause while Arlo leaves, Hastings grimaces in pain. Seeing this, Chloe asks if he's okay. Hastings kvetches, "An EMP just took us out of play and now we're dropping the ball on the radiological threat against New York City, so no Chloe, I am not okay. And I won't be until we find those rods." But at least he should be out of physical danger now that he's kicked loose that giant chunk of exposition shrapnel that was lodged in his abdomen.
Dana comes up to say Kayla's been checked out at Medical. That was quick, but then it must have been a short exam with nothing working. "Good news, Ms. Hassan: your EKG, EEG, x-rays, ultrasound, CAT, and MRI are all clear. Now just pee on this stick with the digital display and we'll know you're not pregnant as well." Hastings wants her brought back to the U.N. so she can be evacuated along with her parents, but he'll follow up on that himself so Dana can pull together the division heads for a briefing in ten minutes. "Tell them to come with full damage assessment reports," Hastings instructs. Dana asks how they'll do that with no computers. "Tell them to use a pen and a damn legal pad," he says. Do they even have any of those? Something else to put on the list of the guy who's walking to the surface.
A subtitle reads "National Security Agency, Washington, D.C." as a tall, Curtis-looking guy named Phil walks down the hallway. Apparently they never sleep, but in deference to the hour, he's got his tie loosened. He gets a call from Kiefer in his CTUmobile, telling him about the terror situation and the EMP that disabled CTU. He wants an NSA satellite to scan the city, but of course NSA doesn't have any in place; it was all being covered by CTU. Phil agrees to try traffic cams in the search of the gray SUV that Tarin and Samir were seen getting into last hour. Kiefer also tells him to shut down the bridges and tunnels. "Done," Phil says. Wow, that was easy. Knowing the NSA can instantly do that certainly makes me feel a lot safer, how about you?
After the call, Kiefer whips the CTUmobile around into a hard left turn. Cole asks what's up, and Kiefer says this means there's only one way to get in: "Across the East River," Cole says. In the back seat, Agent Owen and the armored CTU tech nerd from a couple of episodes ago are just along for the ride. So far.
On the Brooklyn side of the river, that gray SUV drives out onto a pier to meet the black van that is the latest vehicle to be carrying the rods. Everyone gets out of their respective vehicles and looks at each other seriously. Ali reports to Samir that CTU is "blind, deaf, and dumb." Plus he's got this immediate area secured. Samir pauses to look across the river at the lights of Manhattan and compliments Ali on a job well done, then orders him and his men to load the rods into the "Zodiac." Because if you're carrying something as heavy as uranium fuel rods, you definitely want to be in an inflatable boat with them. Seeing that Tarin looks unhappy about something, Samir tells him, "Hassan's daughter was a necessary sacrifice. Using her was the only way to get the rods into the city." Tarin just nods. He'll be so happy when he finds out Kayla's alive! Meanwhile, at 4:06:15, two men are at each end of the crate carrying it down a steep gangplank to the dock. I wouldn't want to be the guy on the bottom end of that crate going downhill, but I guess that's the price of being a terrorist.
Hastings leads Kayla and a group of agents through CTU, telling her she needs to go through the IRK intelligence files and ID the people working with Tarin. Kayla isn't feeling terribly cooperative right now, which is nice of her considering she just inadvertently blew the place up. Hastings stops walking and explains to her about how she drove a car with an EMP into the building and crashed everything they have. "I don't understand. Tarin put me in that car," she says, somehow not getting it. Hastings explains that the escape was staged, and Tarin is alive. "We spotted him a few minutes ago." Kayla's face crumples as Hastings says," I know it's a lot to take in, but you need to go with these agents back to the U.N. Start looking through those files." Suddenly she's a lot less argumentative.
Ali is strapping the crate down in a boat that isn't much larger than the crate itself. Why it's not already at the bottom of the river I don't know. Samir gets off his sat-phone and tells Tarin that the bomb is ready, now awaiting only the rods. Then his walkie-talkie squawks. It's one of the armed men posted around the perimeter, reporting that a vehicle is coming into sight from the east and giving a letter-perfect description of a CTUmobile. After learning that they have three armed men covering it from concealed positions, Samir gives the order to wait until it's in range and take it out. It's 4:08:12.
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
ldn't want an overload or a fire. Chloe thinks she can figure a workaround. Haynam snarks, "You couldn't keep an EMP from taking out your whole operation. Forgive me if I don't bow to your expertise." She keeps trying, but he shuts her down and rudely insists that she leave the room. She huffs out at 4:21:37, and he closes the door behind her. See how frustrating it is to deal with socially retarded tech wizards who think they know everything, Chloe?
She goes and finds Arlo hand-connecting some Ethernet cables, like that's going to fix anything, and asks him if there's another way to the trunk line besides through the server room. Of course there isn't, because that might provide a way around some of the impending drama and conflict. Chloe explains her situation to Arlo, and he suggests she talk to Hastings about it. Chloe knows that won't work, so Arlo tells her to leave it in the capable hands of the NSA. Frustrated, Chloe leaves him to it.
Instead of taking Arlo's advice, she's calling Renee Walker's cell phone. She reaches her at Kiefer's apartment, where she doesn't seem to have done much to make herself at home other than turning on the light in the bedroom. Which seems a little forward if you ask me. Chloe fills Walker in on the EMP situation, and her fear that Kiefer's in trouble. "Slow down, Chloe," Walker says. Chloe explains about Kiefer tracking the terrorists and then losing contact with the NSA. Walker asks if Hastings knows about this, and Chloe says yes, but won't do anything about it. Getting ready to move, Walker asks Chloe where Kiefer was as of last contact, and Chloe tells her the first exit off the Williamsburg Bridge. Walker says she's off on the hunt, and tells Chloe to get CTU back up so she can send her Kiefer's position. Chloe complains to Walker about the problems she's having on that front, but Walker isn't sympathetic. "You have to make them listen, Chloe. Do what you have to do." Chloe says she will, and they hang up. Walker gets her gun out of her suitcase and cocks it all bad-ass, while Chloe looks the opposite of bad-ass. Bad-tummy, maybe. It's 4:23:53.
4:28:14. Owen and Kiefer are still ripping apart that CTUmobile, a project that's been going on for fifteen minutes under withering fire. I heard that the auto shop classes at my high school could be like that. Back at CTU, Dana finds where an agent is informing a group of "non-essential personnel" that they're being evacuated. Presumably that agent will be going with them, and there will be nobody left in the building save Hastings, Chloe, Dana, and Arlo. But then it's proven to be rather surprising how many more speaking roles CTU suddenly sprouts when the computers quit working. Dana shows up to cut Prady from the herd of soon-to-be-evacuees, and leads him into a holding room. She apologizes for the delay in getting back to him. Prady is still playing the friendly hick, sympathetically saying, "They briefed me on what happened. Terrible thing." Dana gives him more bad news: the EMP erased everything. "Well that's a damn shame," Prady says. "So what you're telling me is whoever helped Kevin Wade rob that evidence locker, they just caught a huge break?" Yes, that person certainly did. She tells him that even the backups are onsite, which I don't think Prady would believe even if he were really the ignorant rube he's been pretending to be. Dana ruefully tells Prady she's done all she can and wishes him luck finding Kevin. He says she knows how to reach him if anything changes, and adds, "Hope you get your lights back on." When in fact he rather looks as though he'd like to punch them out.
At 4:30:04, Chloe returns to the server room, and takes a moment to heave a nervous sigh before entering. When she does, Haynam isn't any happier to see her then he was before, even when she tries to show him the safety workaround she came up with. With a loud but slightly shaky voice, she says, "I'm going to have to ask you one last time, we really need to do this my way. We have agents in the field who are close to finding the nuclear rods and they need our help." Haynam again tells her to get out, threatening to call security. But instead of leaving, she pulls a snub-nosed automatic on him and says, "You get out!" She orders everyone to clear the room, and while they do, Haynam, with his hands held high, tries to reason with her. Because that usually works out well for people. She says she doesn't want to hurt him. "You're probably an okay guy when you're not at work. And you're wearing a wedding ring. I swear to god, if you don't leave right now, I will shoot you." He hesitates, and she finally gets him to clear out. She locks the door behind him. Outside, Haynam tells his men to get Hastings, and security. You think?
Shooting is still going on at the docks. Someone's going to have to run out of ammo at some point, right? The bad guys are slowly moving in, and Cole warns that they're about to be flanked. I think the greater danger is that the shooters might get close enough for Kiefer to kill them all and then he won't need to execute his genius plan. Which he now explains to the other agents, now that two large, rectangular armor plates have been removed from the truck. He explains to them that they'll use the two plates to "form a wedge so we can make it to the call box." He says they need to move slowly and stay together or it won't work. "No mater how difficult it gets out there, this armor is going to protect us. You need to trust that." Okay, so if the armor's so awesome, why did Kiefer panic and crash the CTUmobile in the first place when he and his fellow agents were safely inside? He has Cole and King take one plate while he and Owen take the other at 4:32:33. They form up, and the two big black armor plates slowly walk out into the pavement with the men behind them, bullets bouncing off them the whole way. It's clearly too much for King's nerves, and he wants to make a run for it, even as Kiefer tells him to stay in formation. "We're almost there, move!" King says, trying to rush ahead. Uh, what does he think is going to happen when they get there? It's not like the call box is protected or anything. But it's moot anyway, because of course he gets shot and their little mobile shelter immediately collapses, leaving them out in the open. Kiefer, Cole, and Owen run for cover, firing the whole way, while King lies there helplessly, occasionally stopping a bullet with the odd extremity. Once the other three reach the relative safety of a storage shed, Kiefer tells a clearly worried Owen, "There's nothing we can do for him now." And Kiefer doesn't seem to feel too bad about it either. This is of course what happens to everybody who doesn't listen to Kiefer, sooner or later. The terrorists are of course being careful not to actually kill King, because nobody's going to come out to rescue a dead guy. Owen hates to abandon his colleague, and Cole agrees: "We don't leave our men behind." Well, if it makes them feel better, they can't leave at all when they're pinned down like this. Again. Because of King, I might add. Kiefer maintains, "Best thing we can do for him is make it to the hard line, try and call for help." He tells Cole to cover the north and Owen the east, and Kiefer can make it to the phone. King raises a hand for help, and gets it shot. I don't know what Kiefer's waiting for now that he's outlined the plan, but after a long moment, Owen runs out into the open after King anyway. Since he's just committed them anyway, Kiefer and Cole jump out to provide covering fire while Owen drags King toward the shelter. He's almost there when he gets shot and goes down as well. Cole and Kiefer have to drag both of them in now, but at least Cole finally scores a hit on one of the bad guys. About time. When they're back in relative safety, Owen apologizes to Kiefer through a mouthful of blood. "I couldn't leave him behind," he says. "You did great," Kiefer assures him. Owen asks if King made it, because apparently he's too badly wounded to turn his head and look. Kiefer looks over at Cole, who shakes his head; Kiefer lies that King survived, and tries to plug Owen's leaky carotid artery with his thumb or something. Cole says the bad guys are repositioning. "Stay on them," Kiefer orders, like it matters at this point. It's 4:35:22.
At 4:39:43, the Hassans are all finally reunited as Kayla tearfully steps off the elevator at the U.N., trailed by CTU agents. She and her mother embrace, almost emotionally enough to disturb Dalia's makeup, which is still holding up spectacularly. Kayla assures her that she's all right, and then apologizes to her father for not listening to her about Tarin. Never mind the fact that Hassan was probably still wrong when he started suspecting Tarin the first time because the writers hadn't yet decided to make him evil. He tells her she's safe and that's what matters, which is big of him. One of the CTU agents who escorted her here tells Hassan that CTU is working on an underground evacuation route. "If there is a radiological attack, you'll be shielded underground," he explains. We'll see how that works out, I'm sure. They'll be leaving as soon as possible, and the agent adds that President Taylor is waiting with the other delegates at the evacuation site. Oh, yeah, it's been such a long time since we've even seen President Taylor, I'd almost forgotten about him. Kayla goes on ahead with some of the agents to look at those intelligence files while Dalia pulls herself back together and tells Hassan, "She's strong. She'll be all right." You have to be, on this show. Hassan, though, is still shaken. "We almost lost her. And I almost lost you. All for a peace agreement that could fall apart at any moment." He's starting to worry about the enemies waiting for him at home, too. Dalia tells him the one thing she hasn't doubted is that he's doing "an absolute good." She wants him to be strong, too. Yeah, I seem to remember him being particularly "strong" in the hours after the assassination attempt, and look how that worked out. Instead of responding, he takes her arm and leads her into the other room. At this rate they're going to be renewing their vows by the end of the season.
Hastings, Haynam, and a hardware tech (who I think was actually an AV guy in Season 4) head down to the server room. Haynam's in a big hurry to get in there before Chloe blows the place up (again), and the tech says it won't be more than a few minutes to drill through the lock mechanism. While they're waiting, Haynam takes advantage of the downtime to bitch at Hastings about Chloe: "Where the hell do you find these people, Hastings?" Hastings tries to calm Haynam down by saying he thinks Chloe was just trying to scare him with the gun, and Haynam says she succeeded. Dana appears in the hallway, apparently having been summoned by Hastings. "O'Brian's gone off the deep end," Hastings explains. "She thinks she knows how to get the CTU [sic] up and running, but she's locked herself in the server room to do it." Dana asks what she's trying to do, and Haynam tells Dana about Chloe's trunk line plan. Dana's reaction is hard to read, but it looks as though she's thinking that might actually work. The drilling commences.
Inside the room, at 4:42:52, Chloe's busy with all manner of hand-wiring when she hears the drilling start. She keeps working, but the door's open in a matter of seconds. Two uniforms enter with guns drawn, and Hastings, followed into the room by Haynam, tells her to stop what she's doing and give up the gun. Chloe limply hands it over, saying, "Don't shoot or anything." Chloe babbles about how she knows this is crazy, but "I wouldn't have done it if I didn't think it could work." She just nee
ds ten more minutes. "Get her out of here now," Haynam snaps. Hastings finally remembers that he's in charge, and tells Haynam, "Now just shut up and let me handle it." Hastings goes to Chloe and asks what she was thinking, which is the first sign that this is going to work out. Otherwise Chloe would already be getting marched off to holding. Chloe insists she can get satellite and comm back up if she can finish getting into the trunk line. "I told Mr. Haynam but he wouldn't listen. So I pulled a gun on him. I didn't want to. I don't even like guns." That's okay; nobody likes Haynam. Hastings turns to Dana, who's been lurking outside the doorway, and Dana agrees with Haynam. Chloe reminds her that Cole's out there, too, and might also be in trouble. Dana says that's why she disagrees with Chloe's plan. "It's reckless. I'm sorry, Chloe." "You've never been my biggest fan, why start now?" Chloe bitches at her. She turns back to her boss and says she's taken precautions, and even offers to let him arrest her if she can't do it within ten minutes. I'm sure Morris would be thrilled to see her once again putting her future and her family on the line for Kiefer. Finally, Hastings relents. She gets right to work, declining his offer of any help. "All right, let's give the lady some space," Hastings says expansively, herding everyone out. How far he's come in the last eleven hours.
In the hall, he dismisses the guards and tells a disgusted Haynam that he's willing to take the chance that Chloe's right. Dana lingers a few yards down the hall so she can hear what follows, which is this: As Haynam stomps off, an office guy comes up and tells Hastings that a Bill Prady wants to speak with him, but didn't say what it was about. No explanation as to why Prady wasn't evacuated with all of the rest of the non-essential personnel. I guess "non-essential" doesn't include nosy, pushy, or obnoxious personnel. Dana stares wide-eyed at Hastings' back as he says to tell Prady he'll be there in fifteen minutes, then goes all innocent-faced as Hastings turns to her to tell her to stick around in case Chloe needs anything. It's 4:46:02. Poor, tapped, helpless, stupid Dana.
At 4:50:22, the longest shootout in 24 history is still going on. Chloe finishes her wiring, and calls Hastings with her new cell phone to report that her technobabble is all ready to go. Hastings asks what happens . "Well," she says, "if I don't electrocute myself, some of our primary systems should start booting up." "All right, whenever you're ready," Hasting says calmly, very sanguine about the prospect of Chloe getting herself fatally juiced. She sits down at a terminal and hits the power. Text starts scrolling on the screen. Behind her, sparks pop out of the wall as a circuit shorts out. For a moment, I wonder if the show might actually be about to kill off Chloe, it likely being the last season and all. But out on the floor, Arlo watches a screen fill with text, quickly replaced by a desktop with icons, and a window displaying a satellite link. My laptop doesn't boot up that quickly, even when it hasn't been exposed to an EMP all day. Hastings tells Arlo to start looking for Kiefer. At Hastings' side, Haynam is looking pissed, and Hastings tells Chloe it's working. He remembers to ask if she's all right, and she says she'll be there in a few minutes. She adds that he needs to contact Walker if they find Kiefer, since she went looking for him earlier. Hastings agrees to do that, and tells Haynam, "Why don't you go see if Ms. O'Brian needs a hand? And be civil this time." Better make sure he doesn't have a gun. And let me just say that I don't buy this for a minute; Chloe can fuck around with servers and trunk lines all she wants, but that doesn't mean I have to believe that allows her to remotely and magically fix any terminals that are out on the floor, still just as fried as they were fifty-two minutes ago.
At 4:52:06, Kiefer is still trying to keep Owen alive, but his efforts finally fail. Poor kid; he went from green rookie to proven hero to seasoned veteran to cooling corpse in a matter of hours. Worst day at work ever. After a respectful pause, Cole says he lost track of two of the snipers, so they don't have much time. Kiefer says, "We need to give them something to shoot at." What about rigging up the bodies of Owen and King like giant marionettes that they can use to fool the bad guys into thinking they're immortal so they'll run away in panic? Oh, Kiefer's got a "better" idea. He says he'll head north to draw their fire, and Cole will run to the call box. "That's a suicide play, Jack, you'll never make it," Cole protests. "You will," Kiefer says. Cole resists, but Kiefer pulls nonexistent rank on him, so Cole reluctantly nods. Kiefer asks a last favor of Cole: "Make sure that Hastings keeps his promise. That he doesn't bring Renee back in." Cole gives his word, and they make their move. They dart out at about the same time, Kiefer shooting while Cole runs. Kiefer's keeping the shooters pretty busy, at least until he takes a bullet that brings him down, far from cover. But now that he's lying down, apparently his aim improves, and he takes out a couple of the bad guys from the ground. His assault rifle empty, he switches to his sidearm and exchanges shots with Ali before taking a few to the vest and flopping limply onto his back. Cole is bogged down in a shootout with the other surviving bad guy. Ali zooms in with his infrared rifle scope on Kiefer's unconscious face, ready to make the kill shot.
And of course that's when he gets two in the back, from none other than Walker and her handgun. I'd wonder how she found Kiefer so quickly, but I guess it's not that hard to home in on a sustained gunfight that goes from 4:08 to 4:53 AM, even in New York. With Ali taken care of, she again follows the sound of gunshots to the guy Cole's fighting, and casually takes him down as well, this time with three shots due to the increased range. "Clear!" Cole bellows, as though he did anything. While he runs to the phone to make the call, Walker runs to Kiefer. He comes to, blinking in panic, and tells her, "They've got the fuel rods in a boat heading across the river into the city. I can't breathe." Sure, bury the lede. Walker tells him the vest held, but adds, "Relax, you may have a collapsed lung. Try not to move." Cole arrives at Kiefer's side to tell him that CTU's back up and NYPD is sending helicopters, so all is not lost. Well, except Kiefer's breath.
At CTU, Arlo tells Hastings about the call he just got from Cole. We'll leave aside the fact that Cole probably should have known better than to try CTU first, and get on to the more urgent news that the rods are in a Zodiac heading northwest across the river into Manhattan. Or at least they were 45 minutes ago. Let's hope the East River suddenly got a lot wider. Hastings orders the already-airborne NYPD choppers redirected to the shoreline so they can put up a cordon. Chloe's on it. Hastings starts to tell her "Chloe...thanks. Y-you were --" "I'm not good with praise," she cuts him off. Hastings rolls his eyes. Hey, he could still yell at her for doing her IT repairs with a gun.
An NYPD chopper alights at the dock area where the battle's been going on all hour, and is barely on the ground for a second before Cole jumps in and tells the pilot to take off again. It's not like it would be a safe place to land a helicopter anyway, with the spent shell casings probably inches deep on the ground. Walker is holding Kiefer while he sits up, trying to reinflate his lungs, and squad cars come screaming into the area.
At CTU, Dana walks slowly down a hallway at 4:56:23. Clearly, making the lighting look less sinister was not one of Chloe's priorities. It's the hallway to where Prady is waiting in a holding room. She bursts into the holding room where Prady has been waiting and stands over him, demanding, "What do you think you're doing, going to my boss?" "My job," Prady says. He drops the act and openly accuses her of involvement in the robbery. "I think you know exactly where Kevin is. I th
ink you're protecting him." She says he's out of his mind. "And you're a liar," he says. "I'm not leaving here until I know the truth." Standing up and getting way too close to her, he advises her to come clean while she has the chance. "If you don't, I'm gonna nail your ass to the wall." He's close enough to whisper now, which was a bad move, because she clubs him to the ground. Well, it's going to be pretty hard to convince him of her innocence now. She whips a cord around his throat and starts pulling, while he struggles weakly, never getting more than a hunk of her hair and maybe a bit of boob with the back of his hand. Although a lot of people would probably die happy if the last thing they touched in this life was one of Katee Sackhoff's girls. Finally he goes limp -- or at least his body does. Dana wipes her mouth and gets up. Well, this is going to be difficult to explain away.
Splitscreen. A skyline shot of Manhattan features that helicopter, with Cole inside using his infrared scope. The terror Zodiac docks, having finally completed its interminable voyage across the East River. Hell, in this amount of time it could have circumnavigated Manhattan. At the UN, the Hassans look concerned as Kayla goes through the IRK intelligence files. That's not something they could do after the evacuation? At CTU, Hastings and Chloe watch what was still a blank big screen when last we saw it. Kiefer is helped by Walker and an EMT to an ambulance, probably out of action for the five minutes, and he tells her, "Contact CTU. See if they picked them up coming across the river." Yeah, at this point they should have an easier time picking them up coming across the main court of Madison Square Garden.
Finally, Dana closes an access panel in the holding room wall, hiding Prady's body inside. Kind of a shame that none of the splitscreens showed her dragging his inert bulk across the floor. Her face has gone totally evil, and she dials her cell phone. Is Cole really going to want to hear what she has to tell him? "It's me," she says into the phone. "CTU is back online." "I know," Samir says on the other end. Wait, what? "The helicopter's searching the river," Samir adds. "They're getting close. You should have warned us earlier. Some of Samir's men on this side of the river are lifting the rods out of their crate and loading them into the trunk of a yellow cab. Dana says she didn't have time earlier, being busy maintaining her cover and all. "I don't know how much longer I'll be able to stay under," she warns. Man, I don't know how to feel about this at all, even days later. I'm reserving judgment until we know more, but my preliminary assessment is that this is 90% ridiculous. On the one hand, Katee Sackhoff has claimed in interviews that she's known where this has been going all along, but on the other, someone who could dispatch a parole officer like that, even one like Prady, wouldn't have had much reason to cower before Kevin the way she did earlier in the evening. Samir says, "I thought you took care of that problem." "So did I," she says. "It came back." Samir says they have to move, and will need Dana's help getting past the cordon. Dana says she'll do that. "Stand by, I'll call you in a few minutes." Suddenly I'm feeling really bad for Cole. Samir hangs up. So does Dana, then leaves the room. The yellow cab that now carries Tarin, Samir, and a whole lot of uranium drives away into the foreground along the riverbank. In the background? The U.N., of course, It's 5:00:00.
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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.