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NSA satellites are tracking the yellow cab carrying the nuclear rods -- until Dana sabotages them from CTU for just long enough for Chloe to lose track of them. With the rods loose in Manhattan, President Taylor reassigns Kiefer to President Hassan's evacuation detail. While they're setting that up, Taylor gets a call from Samir threatening to detonate the dirty bomb in an hour unless she hands over Hassan. Taylor refuses, against the advice of her national security team. But a general approaches Chief of Staff Rob Weiss to authorize Hassan's kidnapping by American forces behind Taylor's back. Ethan (remember him?) busts them at it, then has a heart attack before he can warn anyone -- other than by pocket-dialing Kiefer. While this is going on, Dana is feeding roadblock data to Samir while Tarin drives the dirty bomb into position. Kiefer calls off the evacuation, but too late to avoid a firefight. Which Kiefer wins, of course, with some help from Walker and Hassan himself. All Samir knows is that the president isn't playing ball, so against Dana's advice, he orders Tarin to activate the bomb. The countdown starts at 15 minutes. Which, if luck is with us, should at least put the detonation in the middle of week's first commercial break.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!In tonight's previouslies freeze-frames: Jack Bauer, Renee Walker, Chloe O'Brian, Samir Mehran, and Dana Walsh. Who, you'll recall, is the mole. I'd forgotten CTU was even supposed to have a mole, hadn't you?
Helicopters are searching the East River with searchlights, for all the good it's going to do them. At the battlefield where Kiefer spent most of the last hour, an EMT is advising him to see a doctor about his severely bruised ribs before his lungs collapse, but we know how much time Kiefer has for that shit. Putting on what I hope is a fresh vest, he meets up with Walker to ask her for an update. She tells him the Zodiac that carried the rods across the river was found half-sunk on the far bank near 11th Street, empty. Sure, it sinks after they take the uranium out of it. "The rods are in Manhattan, Jack," she reports. She adds that the good news is that CTU thinks they're only a few minutes behind. Kiefer starts relaying orders to CTU through Walker, mostly stuff CTU was going to do anyway, and tells the pilot in a waiting helicopter to "Fire it up. I want you ready to go as soon as we've got a target." Which the pilot was probably also going to do anyway.
Over at the dock on the Manhattan side where we just saw the crates unloaded at the end of the last hour, Cole and some cops are hanging around talking to a convenient witness who saw the crates loaded into the cab. Hastings has Chloe pull up satellite frames of the loading as it happened, because apparently the NSA came through with the orbital surveillance just in time. "Find them in real time, Chloe," Hastings orders. Sure, no problem. A yellow cab in New York City will pop right out at her. Hastings puts Arlo and Dana (the latter of whom is just now returning from her little Prady-murdering errand in holding) in charge of interfacing with NYPD and NEST, respectively. Arlo's got a drone back online, showing the cab going west on 14th street. Cole, who's been listening in, hops into a CTUmobile in pursuit. While he's doing that, his fiancée is secretly dialing her cell phone and warning Samir in a whisper, "They've located you on satellite." While listening in to the tracking going on in the row of desks ahead of her, she relays instructions for avoiding pursuit to Samir, who in turn relays them to Tarin, who's driving the cab. Cole is matching them turn for turn, and soon Samir can hear sirens. Lucky for him, Dana is about to do some mischief to the CTU systems. "Satellite will be disabled for thirty seconds. On my mark." She hits a key, the satellite screen goes snowy, and she murmurs, "Go." Everyone else at CTU freaks out while the taxi screams around corners so as to lose the pursuers. Dana directs them to blend into cab traffic on Ninth Avenue, which they soon do. And by the time the satellites come back online, the TerrorTaxi is gone. Cole says he'll order an NYPD cordon around the area. Hastings orders, "Have them check every garage, warehouse, loading dock. They must have pulled in somewhere." Cole acknowledges the order rather than saying anything about how it's patently impossible, and Hastings spits at his floor crew, "Get me the president." Yeah, I think after a screw-up this bad, I'd wait for her to call me. Maybe she'll forget about the problem if no one reminds her.
After getting Dana to confirm that he's clear, Samir tells her to send him data on NYPD patrol patterns and checkpoints. "As soon as it's safe," she says. That timeline doesn't satisfy Samir, but Dana tells him, "My instructions were to help you. Not jeopardize my cover." Which one of those to categories does murdering a probation officer on CTU premises fall under?
Hastings goes somewhere quiet for his call to Taylor. He reaches her at what a subtitle tells us is "McGuire Air Force Base, Wrightstown, New Jersey," where she's sitting at the end of a long conference table with her Chief of Staff Rob Weiss on her left, and her Secretary of State Ethan Kanin on her left. Well, looky who's back. I was beginning to think that after the first evacuation of the U.N. tonight, he was just going to keep running until he got to Ireland. Hastings breaks the news that the rods are loose in Manhattan, which he can confirm by virtue of seeing them being transported just a few minutes ago. "What happened?" Ethan asks. "We lost them," Hastings says. Gee whiz, Brian, don't bog us down in details or anything. He dramatically adds, "Madame President, I'm sorry to have to tell you this. We can no longer guarantee the safety of Manhattan." Rob vents his spleen at the speakerphone, but Taylor calmly tells Hastings to call on any government resources he needs, and tells him to have local authorities prepare for the worst. "Yes ma'am," Hastings says, and hangs up, probably glad to still have his job. No matter how much his job may suck right now. Taylor tells Ethan to set up a situation room and put together the national security team. Oh, sure, that should all be ready in a couple of days. As he goes, Taylor asks Rob if Hassan has been evacuated from the U.N. yet. Rob says he's about to be. "Get me Jack Bauer," Taylor orders. That's one of those presidential macros, right there.
At 5:07:37, Kiefer's on the phone with Cole, getting an update and agreeing with him that the timing on that satellite outage was pretty damn convenient. Kiefer asks who was running it at CTU and Cole tells him it was Chloe. "You know her from before, right? And you trust her?" "With my life," Kiefer says decisively. But then he gets that call from President Taylor, so Cole's off his phone and out of the episode. Once Kiefer switches phones, Taylor wastes no time getting to the point: she wants Kiefer to supervise Hassan's evacuation from the U.N. to where she is, at McGuire AFB. Kiefer politely argues that he's probably of more use on the search for the rods. "Besides," he adds, "Secret Service is more than capable." Still, Taylor wants her very favorite agent on the job. Kiefer agrees and hangs up. He tells Walker, who has just shown up in front of him, what's going on, and she's like, "Okay let's go." Kiefer says he has to do this alone, for whatever reason he might have other than habit, but she refuses. "I'm coming with you. End of discussion." All he can do is follow as she walks away. I wish we could have just a glimpse into the future of their domestic coexistence. "I'm going to go drop some of these old flak jackets off at Goodwill." "I'm coming with you and you can't stop me!" That could be either one of them saying either of those things, obviously.
At 5:08:55, the TerrorTaxi enters a warehouse where all manner of welding is going on. Samir and Tarin get out and are met by the bomb technician Samir talked to on the phone a couple of hours ago. He's sorry to hear Ali didn't make it, but Samir assures him, "Tarin will take his place as driver." All that remains to be done is for the rods to be loaded into the bomb. Samir takes Tarin aside and tells him to be ready to leave. "I want to place the bomb as soon after I talk to the president as possible." So as to give them more time to find it, I guess. Tarin watches the bomb tech open the big duffel bag with the rods inside. It's 5:10:12. How exactly are these rods going to do any damage at all when nobody seems afraid to be around them? Maybe it's a special kind of radiation that only works on Russians.
5:14:24. Kiefer and Walker emerge from an elevator at the U.N. and greet a Secret Service agent named O'Connor, who already knows who they are, and doesn't seem to resent being saddled with a couple of freelancers. She explains to them about the plan to evacuate the Hassans underground, with a task force of seven Secret Service agents, two of Hassan's guys (neither of whom is Nabeel, which is a little odd), and now Kiefer and Walker. They'll be ready to go in ten minutes, via a tunnel that parallels a PATH train into New Jersey. Just waiting on the vehicles now. Kiefer wants to see the evac routes, but since Hassan wants to see him first, he sends Walker to deal with that while he meets him in the Council Chamber.
Hassan stands to shake hands with Kiefer when he enters the room, but totally forgets to thank him for saving his daughter. He's glad to hear Kiefer's leading the evacuation, and tells him that he and his wife and daughter are ready now, awaiting only Kiefer's instructions. Kiefer asks for ten minutes before they can get them out through a tunnel into New Jersey. Hassan chuckles ruefully: "And here I thought I would be leaving the United Nations today at the head of a peace march down Fifth Avenue." Grandiose much? Kiefer says Taylor's still holding out hope for that, and repeats the ten-minute timeline. Oh, and he's welcome for saving his daughter.
Ethan apparently works fast; a situation room has indeed been set up by 5:15:11, complete with dispersal maps of Manhattan up on the big screen. A general brings up the subject of how to respond in terms of military retaliation, and then my local Fox affiliate goes haywire, sticking some rogue commercials in here for some reason. By the time we're back, Taylor is taking a call from Samir on his sat phone. He lies that it's going to be a short conversation, and says he wants to convince her that he doesn't actually want to hurt innocent Americans. Taylor brings up he bomb he 's threatening them with. "Actually a radiological dispersal device, Madam President," Samir corrects, "capable of contaminating forty square blocks under a dense radiation cloud." Well, at least it's not a bomb. Taylor in turn threatens retaliation against the IRK if this happens. "I would expect nothing less," Samir says. But all he wants is Hassan. "He is a traitor to his people and must stand trial for his crimes." "That will never happen," Taylor declares, I guess letting the accusation stand. Samir gives her one hour to change her mind. "Mr. Woods knows how to contact me," he adds, meaning Tiny Tim from Homeland Security. "Madam President? Clock stars now." Taylor asks how many people they're talking about. "Between a hundred and a hundred and fifty thousand," Tim estimates. Taylor tells Rob to tell CTU about the threat, but not the ransom demand. She tells Tim to call up the National Guard and start an evacuation. In an hour? Rob cuts in: "I'm just gonna say it: we should consider the alternative." "You mean give in to the demand to turn over President Hassan?" Ethan asks, stunned. Rob argues, "No one man is worth the lives of tens of thousands. And you know what? I bet he would agree." Call him and ask him, then. Ethan can't believe they're even talking about this, which Rob says they need to. "Not unless you're intent on destroying our moral authority," Ethan lectures. "This country's unique place among nations, maybe forever?" Rob weighs it against the people, homes, and businesses, "uninhabitable for maybe a hundred years or more?" Into this long, awkward pause steps Tim, saying he agrees. "Giving up Hassan is wrong, but a forty-block wasteland at the heart of New York City is unthinkable." So wrong > unthinkable. Rob adds that the country would crucify them if people ever found out this could have been avoided. "Now we're talking politics, for God's sake?" Ethan blusters. Rob argues, "We're talking about the primary role of government. Any government. Which is to protect its citizens." The general from before jumps in to say that if Taylor has to retaliate against the IRK, things could escalate and end up destabilizing the entire region. When Taylor points out that he was the one who brought up retaliatory strikes in the first place, he brings up the popular military expression "facts on the ground," which almost always means somebody's about to say something obnoxious. In this case, it's that they've changed: "Now we have a viable option." "Viable?" Taylor repeats disapprovingly, and asks, "Is that the sense in the room, then? That surrendering President Hassan is somehow viable?" She lays out her three points: 1) the bad guys might detonate the bomb anyway, 2) Hassan is a guest and her partner in peace, and 3) "caving to any terrorist demand weakens this nation immeasurably." We already know this about her from last season of course, when she also refused to cave in and as a result got to watch a midair collision right through her office window. And a funny thing, she's still in office even after that. "Now we have sixty minutes [actually more like fifty-eight] to find these bastards, and I believe we will. But if we don't, and the worst happens, we will deal with it. We will pick ourselves up off the floor and deal with it." But why? Because that's what we do? "Because that's what we do!" she says. I knew it. "Americans don't stay down. We rise up together in times of crisis." To amplify her point, she stands up, saying, "We carry on. Is that clear?" No answer except for everyone else standing up. "Start the calls, Tim" she orders, and heads out of the room to wherever else she needs to be. I hope nobody else had anything to bring up in that meeting, because I'm pretty sure it's over now.
At 5:21:23, Dana comes up to Chloe's desk to ask for an updated list of NYPD road closures and checkpoints. Chloe says she thought Arlo was running that, but Dana says she's coordinating the arriving National Guard teams. "I want to know where the holes are so I can plug 'em." Chloe agrees to send it to her screen. Walking away, Dana calls Samir to tell him he'll have the goods in five minutes. He says he talked to Taylor. "The response was as I anticipated, but as the time pressure builds, she'll change her mind." So clearly Samir never saw Season Seven either. Dana asks what the plan is if Taylor doesn't cave. "Then we'll strike a hard blow against the city," Samir says, not really sounding that broken up about it. "Either way, the peace process dies." So does the call, as Samir hangs up. As he does so, he goes and watches the bomb tech clipping the rods into place around the outside of a very large bomb in the back of a delivery van. "It's ready," the tech says. Well, that was easy. How awkward would it have been if the rods had turned out to be the wrong size to fit into the pre-built bomb? I doubt Samir would have enjoyed calling Taylor back and saying, "Okay, we'll give you two more hours, depending on when the hardware stores open. But that is it."
Back at McGuire AFB, the meeting is breaking up as General Brucker approaches Rob for a private word. "I thought Secretary Kanin's point was a good one," he says. "If we simply turn Hassan over, we risk damaging the good name of the United States." What he's got in mind is "a third way. Covert action. In which we deliver Hassan to the terrorists but make it look like they took him hostage. We save New York, and we preserve our reputation in the eyes of the world." Clearly this "general" is some kind of hippie. Rob likes the idea, but he's certain Taylor won't. He turns to go, but the general has no intention of approaching Taylor in the first place. "The question is, will you?" Rob starts making excuses, but the general conveniently has a team all ready to go if he can just get Hassan's evac route. And when Rob says he can't get it, the general says, "Then we'll just have to get it from Mr. Kanin." "It's sedition, general," Rob finally says. Oh, that. The general busts out the Fourth Nuremburg Principle: "If the orders of the president are illegal, it is our moral obligation to disobey." Rob fails to invoke Godwin's law in return, leaving the door open for Brucker to throw his own words back at him about the primary role of government. "It's time to decide whether or not you meant them." It's 5:24:34, and just in case Rob is wondering, the correct answer is no.
5:28:52. Everyone at CTU is hard at work, and Dana gets that list of NYPD checkpoints from Chloe on her computer. She's just about to forward it on to Samir when Hastings calls for everyone's attention. "The White House just received credible intelligence the terrorists we've been tracking plan to detonate a radiological device in New York City in less than fifty minutes," he announces. "All of us in this building have friends and family who live in the city. We know we are bound by law not to warn them." Nice reminder. "But we also know it's still in our power to protect them. We are their last line of defense. That is our job. That is what we will do with every second of every minute we have left. Starting now. Go back through all your leads. Appeal to your sources one more time. Find. That. Bomb." He leaves the floor, which buzzes with renewed activity. Futile, pointless activity, but activity. Pretty much the only person succeeding in getting anything done is Dana, who is now forwarding that file on to Samir.
Who is already on the phone to Tarin, who in turn is in a delivery uniform driving that van through the city. Samir tells Tarin to turn left, and Tarin pulls into what looks like West Backlot Avenue. "The fallout radius will include a good part of the Upper West Side," Samir tells him. Tarin doesn't look as thrilled at this news as you might think. Maybe he was hoping to take some night classes at Columbia semester.
At 5:31:16, Rob leads General Brucker into what I assume is the office Ethan's using while he's here. So it looks like he's going through with it, which effectively makes him no longer the chief of staff but the chief of morons. I mean, obviously someone's going to find out about this, and a lot of people won't believe Taylor had nothing to do with it. While Brucker closes the curtains, Rob gets on Ethan's laptop, signs right in (because they apparently all know each other's passwords), and gives Brucker the overview on Hassan's security: he's being protected by eleven agents, including Jack Bauer. "Why is Bauer involved?" Brucker asks, because Kiefer is just that famous all the way up to the highest levels of the military. "The president trusts him," Rob answers. "And believe me, he's not someone to be taken lightly." Brucker isn't worried about it, which calls his judgment even more into question than it already was. He holds out a thumb drive, and when Rob doesn't exactly snatch it, Brucker weasels, "The loss of life is regrettable, Mr. Weiss. No one feels this more keenly than a solder who's led men into battle, but right now we don't have a choice." Sure they do -- and Rob makes his. He takes the thumb drive, and the files are quickly transferred. Right then of course is when Ethan comes in, wondering what's going on. Sure, he disappears all night, then shows up right when nobody wants to see him. Brucker lies that he and Rob were just trying to pull up White House readiness protocols they couldn't get from Rob's computer. Ethan spots the thumb drive still sticking out of his computer, and Rob quickly adds that he was checking Hassan's itinerary to see about a military escort. You know, just on the off chance it occurs to Ethan to check what these guys were actually doing on his computer. For now, he just grunts skeptically. Brucker slowly walks around Ethan and blocks the door, refusing to move. Ethan's pissed, and Brucker tells him to sit down. Ethan refuses, sticking his hand into his jacket pocket. Suddenly Ethan's pocket says in a muffled voice, "This is Bauer, go ahead." So Ethan's last call was to Kiefer, apparently. Kiefer is walking with the group leading the evacuation under the U.N., trying to figure out who's calling him and why they're not talking. Brucker realizes Ethan has a live phone in there, and grabs at it. During the scuffle, it becomes Rob's turn to block the door. "This is beyond madness," Ethan says. "The two of you will spend the rest of your lives in prison." Brucker says maybe, "but my guess is that one day the country will thank us for it." Yes, when terrorists are calling the White House with demands like it's a Pizza Hut. Ethan begs Rob not to do this. "Don't betray your president." But then whatever Ethan was gong to say after that is cut off as he starts having a big, fat, hammy heart attack. Brucker watches as Rob helps him with his tiny little pills, but refuses to let Rob call for help. "The first thing he does is get word to the President." Rob says they can't do nothing, and Brucker points out that Rob gave him his medication. It's not like he's the kind of White House Chief of Staff who pushes people down stairs. As Rob tries to help Ethan, Brucker insists this is a tactical decision, not an emotional one. "We wait to acquire Hassan before calling an ambulance, understand?" "What if he doesn't make it that long?" Rob protests. "We have to pray that he does," Brucker says. Rob reluctantly agrees, as Ethan passes out. The price of this operation is getting higher by the minute.
The evacuation party is underway and underground, briskly walking through the bowels of the U.N. Of course, some might say the U.N. is all bowel, but in this case it's the literal sub-basement tunnels. Hassan has changed out of his suit and into a casual jacket, like he's out on a day trip to look at autumn leaves or something. Up ahead, Kiefer is trying to call Ethan back, but getting no answer. So then he calls the CTU switchboard to have them patch him through. Wow, you do not call Kiefer unless you're really sure you want to talk to him, do you?
General Brucker is on the phone to the leader of his commando team, who says they can get to the tunnel access point in time, "If we haul ass." The ambush is set to happen at the vehicles. Brucker reminds him to get Hassan alive and wishes him luck. Meanwhile, under the U.N., Kiefer gets off the phone with the McGuire AFB switchboard and calls Walker up to the front of the group to warn her that something's up. "Keep your eyes open," he says. It's 5:36:47, and finally Walker can stop running blindly into things.
5:41:04. The evacuation party has reached a section of tunnel 200 meters long, cluttered with crates and pallets. There's barely enough room along one side to walk two abreast. Which I guess is why the SUVs are waiting at the mouth of the tunnel, with plainclothes agents standing to them. Against his instincts, Kiefer starts leading everyone down the tunnel, trying once again to get Ethan on the phone. There certainly wasn't this much drama getting Taylor out of the U.N., as I recall. Either time. Brucker's commandos, lying in ambush, see them coming and pull down their ski masks. "Wait until the target's in the kill zone," the leader instructs. "Remember, we need to take Hassan alive." the leader says. It would probably be okay to shoot Hassan someplace in a large but non-vital part of his body, like the leg or the hair.
Inside Ethan's borrowed office, Brucker has apparently left the unconscious Ethan alone with Rob, after having helped lift him up onto the sofa so that his heart can continue to Rob takes Ethan's pulse while trying to ignore a knock on the door. When it doesn't go away, he throws on his suit jacket and answers it. The woman outside says Jack Bauer's insisting on talking to Ethan, and won't be put off. Rob says he'll take the call at 5:42:46. After some hesitation, he finally does. As a cursory nod to realism, Kiefer has to contend with some static while deep underground, but of course it's the least realistic-sounding static ever. Soon the call clears up so that Kiefer can tell Rob what's going on, and ask why Ethan tried to call him and now won't answer. Rob makes some lame excuses about Ethan being busy with the Joint Chiefs (which is going to be awkward when Kiefer finds a reason to be in a room with the Joint Chiefs himself at some point), and when Kiefer asks what Ethan wanted to talk to him about, Rob pretends not to have any idea. "It could have been anything," he says. Kiefer doesn't think so: "He knows we're conducting a sensitive evac. He called me during it. There's got to be some kind of connection." For a secret agent, Kiefer certainly thinks like a screenwriter sometimes. Rob promises to relay the message, and Kiefer snaps, "I don't think you understand. I need to talk to Secretary Kanin now!" The post of White House Chief of Staff is a thankless one. You get the blame for what goes wrong, you get no credit for what goes right, and sooner or later Jack Bauer is going to be yelling at or even threatening you about something. Rob yells at Kiefer to do his job, and hangs up on him. Realizing what happened, Kiefer tells Walker, "Son of a bitch just hung up on me." Of course he doesn't realize Rob just did him a favor; if Rob had a brain in his head, he would have kept Kiefer distracted with the phone call while he walked into Brucker's ambush. Amateur. Walker makes excuses about the stress everyone's under, which doesn't impress Kiefer. He orders a halt to the march, and decides they're heading back. Wait, does Kiefer not know about the bomb deadline? I can't believe he'd make this choice between a radiological attack and a losing game of phone tag.
The commandos see this, at a range of a hundred yards. "Okay, take out as many as you can," the leader sighs resignedly, and they open fire at this range. Kiefer, Walker, the Hassans, and the security team all dive for cover, which fortunately is plentiful in this overly cluttered tunnel. One of them goes down quickly even so, and one of the agents waiting by the SUVs is quickly dispatched as well. Over the gunfire, Kiefer -- hunkered down to Hassan -- yells at Walker to get the Hassans back to the U.N. "What about you?" she yells back, huddled with the Hassan women in a ridiculous confusion of heads and hands and hands over heads. Kiefer says he'll be right behind her, and sends Hassan darting up the tunnel to rejoin his family while Kiefer lays down covering fire for him. There's a lot more shooting, and once the other agent at the SUV is taken out, there's not much preventing the commandos from coming in pursuit, shooting the whole way. Kiefer dives down to Agent O'Connor, who reminds him that his orders are to stay with Hassan and that he needs to go. "I know what I have to do, sir," she says. Must suck to be her; she signs up for the Secret Service, prepared to die for her president, and then has to end up dying for someone else's. Kiefer wishes her luck, and they both jump out, she covering him with her machine gun while he makes his retreat. During a lull, she gives orders to her remaining agents through her cufflink, and the shooting starts all over again. Both sides are taking hits, but the commandos are still coming, and they still have the Secret Service outnumbered and outgunned. Her assault weapon empty, O'Connor draws her sidearm and marches forward, firing the whole time. Bye, Agent O'Connor. Kiefer catches up to Hassan, who wants to go back and help. Kiefer insists, "They're buying us the time we need. Don't let it be in vain. We need to go, now." He leads him back up the tunnel at a run at 5:46:52.
5:51:13. Ethan is still passed out on his office couch, if not dead. Rob is looking increasingly nervous about how much time has passed, probably for more reasons than one.
The remainder of the evacuation party is retreating at a run. As they retreat, Hassan asks Kiefer for a weapon. "I've been a soldier, Mr. Bauer," Hassan retcons. "I can handle a gun. I'll fight with you." Kiefer says his job is to protect Hassan, not put him to work, and sends him on ahead. Right then is when stupid Kayla trips and hurts her ankle, so Walker and Dalia have to support her between them. Between her and Farhad, these Hassans have ankles like racehorses. As Hassan and Kiefer catch up to them (which isn't hard), Kiefer looks to the corner behind them, and sees from the approaching flashlight beams that the commandos are almost around the corner. He says they're not going to make it, but fortunately there are still plenty of crates and pallets to hide behind. Thank God for the U.N.'s shoddy housekeeping practices. Kiefer pulls some grenades out of his CTU shoulder-bag and tells Walker he's going to head up the middle, and she should start firing as soon as they go off. "Doesn't mater if you hit anything, just make some noise." Oh, I think it might matter a bit if she hits Kiefer. He also tosses Hassan a handgun and says, "Take care of your family." Time to move. Kiefer starts running toward those million-candlepower flashlights that say, "Shoot here." He tosses a smoke grenade, and Walker pops out of cover, emptying the clip of her handgun down the tunnel and forcing the attackers into cover of their own. They shoot back a bit, then pursue into the smoke. Concealed within the cloud and to one side of the tunnel, Kiefer efficiently kills two of them as they pass by. Walker fires more shots, luring more of them into the smoke, which Kiefer is augmenting with another grenade. What good does it do him protecting Hassan from gunmen if he just kills him with lung cancer instead? Kiefer calls her over, and tells her to start giving him cover fire in five seconds while he takes the "high ground," whatever that means in a tunnel (if it were me, the "high ground" would be "upstairs, away from all this fucking shooting. Laters!"). He gets up on a ledge running the length of this part of the tunnel and starts sneaking up level with them while Walker fires like twenty shots from her handgun without reloading. When they start firing back, Kiefer's in a position to pick off more of them from the side. But while he's reloading, a commando knocks him down from behind. I don't know why the commando didn't just shoot him when he had the chance. He's about to rectify that oversight when he stops a bullet instead -- fired by Hassan. So this means Hassan considers Kiefer family? Kiefer then shoots the guy who was about to shoot Hassan, and orders him to lose his weapon. The wounded commando complies. Kiefer drags him down, unmasks him, (revealing the face of the commandos' leader), and demands, "Who are you?" "You're making a huge mistake," the leader says. "You're American," Kiefer realizes in shock as soon as the man speaks. "Why'd you attack us?" The commando explains, "Because a dirty bomb will be detonated in New York unless we deliver Hassan to the terrorists...him for the bomb in zero-six-fifteen hours." Kiefer looks up at Hassan, who heard every word. Walker says that's in under twenty minutes. Good thing they're already underground then, right? Kiefer asks if Taylor knows about this, and the commando says this is all Brucker. Kiefer holsters his weapon and drags the man to his feet, issuing this dire threat: "I'm going to get you up to the street level, then I'm going to make a phone call!" Brr! The commando says it's now up to Kiefer to deliver Hassan to the terrorists. "I don't take orders from anybody but the President of the United States," Kiefer boasts, and orders him to move. Back up the tunnel the four of them go. I guess Dalia and Kayla are on their own.
In other splitscreen windows, Ethan is still unconscious on his couch, NYPD cars are driving around with sirens on, right past Tarin's van, and the remainder of the evacuation party is reunited. Of course the only survivors are Kiefer, Walker, and the Hassans. Also, Taylor sits in her improvised situation room, probably wondering where the fuck her Chief of Staff and Secretary of State are. And at 5:57:45, Dana leaves her desk to answer a cell phone call. No one even pays attention when she does that any more. She went from Miss Perfect to That Coworker in one night.
It's Samir calling, in his warehouse where welding is apparently done nonstop around the clock. He's wondering why he hasn't heard from her. She says it's because CTU doesn't know anything. In other words, there's no word on whether Taylor is cooperating. "We lost communication with the security detail about twenty minutes ago." Samir figures this means Taylor isn't giving in. Dana starts trying to reason with him: "You use that bomb, you lose your leverage." Samir says Taylor has left him no choice, and the blood will be on her hands. "Samir!" she hisses into her dead phone after he hangs up.
Samir's call is to Tarin, still waiting behind the driver's seat of his van and looking pretty stressed out. He probably has to pee. Samir tells him, "The president has not responded. Start the countdown." He instructs him to stay with the bomb to make sure no one messes with it. Looking anguished, Tarin listens as Samir says, "Your name will never be forgotten, my friend." Calling him "my friend" doesn't really support that claim. Tarin says something in Arabic ("The world is the true life," according to my exhaustive research), and Samir says it back. With that, Tarin hangs up. Then he picks up a watch in his lap and presses a button. In the back of the van, an LED on the bomb lights up and starts counting down from 15 minutes. It's 6:00:00. Uh-oh, this is bad. It means the dirty bomb is going to be out of play one way or another early in the episode, which means a lot of random flailing around for the remaining nine hours. Season Six, anyone?
And in the previews for week, the show is already starting its long goodbye -- with a two-hour episode. How can we miss it if it won't go away?
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.
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