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Hassan decides to give himself up rather than let the terrorists irradiate New York City even though he has to beat Kiefer up a little to do it. That's good enough for Samir, who has Tarin stop the countdown with seven seconds to spare. After tattling on General Brucker to the president, Kiefer is determined to track down Hassan before the exchange happens, but he's too late to prevent Hassan from landing in Tarin's clutches. Taylor rips Rob a new one for his betrayal, but at least the mercenary secures the bomb and Ethan's not quite dead yet. After the lights come on at CTU, Kiefer is put in charge of rescuing Hassan. This puts Dana in a tough position, trying to figure out how to warn Tarin and sabotage the operation, and she nearly kills a suspicious Arlo in the process. Tarin fatally crashes the SUV he's been transporting Hassan in, but it turns out he offloaded the prez moments before. But at least Kiefer has Tarin's cell phone, so it's only a matter of time before he finds the mole. I give it until hour.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!In tonight's previouslies freeze-frames: President Allison Taylor, Rob Weiss, Ethan Kanin, Jack Bauer, and Samir Mehran. That's an unusually White House-heavy group.
As Kiefer's voice tells us the following takes place between 6:00 AM and 7:00 AM, we have time to think that maybe it should start getting light soon in the eas-- whoa, sun's up! The very first shot of the episode is sunrise over Manhattan. That was abrupt. And it marks the last night/day transition on this show ever. Try not to get too choked up.
At McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, Rob takes the unconscious Ethan's pulse, then locks him in his office and goes to find General Brucker working the phones in the temporary Situation Room. The General doesn't have a lot of time to do exposition for whoever's on the other end of the line, so he impatiently says, "A dirty bomb is about to go off in Manhattan, Commander. I'd plan for mass panic." Okay, so we're up to speed. Rob hisses to Brucker that Ethan needs a doctor right now, but Brucker refuses to do anything like that until they have Hassan. Just then Taylor enters, and Brucker and Rob give her an update. They know word will get out, so Taylor has a statement ready that she wants Rob and Ethan to look over. "He wasn't in his office, do you know where he is?" she asks Rob. There's an awkward pause, because Rob can't exactly say that Ethan is in his office, just not visible or answering the door because he's dying on the sofa. "I'll go find him," Rob finally says, leaving the General to deal with their boss alone. Not that Brucker deserves any better. Taylor is understandably stressing out about the fact that there are less than ten minutes left, and Brucker's latest projections that 58,000 deaths are expected in the first three days isn't exactly calming. "But who knows, maybe we'll get lucky," he says. She tells him to let him know as soon as Hassan arrives, and he agrees to do so. She's going to be waiting a while.
Underneath the U.N., Kiefer is helping the lone surviving commando walk through the tunnels while Walker and the Hassans follow behind. Hassan is having trouble with this, repeating to Dalia that it's not right to trade his life for thousands. Dalia argues with him about it, but he's not on board. After a bit more walking, Kiefer finds a room to lock the commando in, wedging a loose section of rebar through the door handle and assuring Hassan that the man's injuries aren't life-threatening. He doesn't know the half of it. Walker calls Kiefer over to tell him about Hassan's feelings on the situation, which Kiefer couldn't be less interested in. "If he wants to take it up with President Taylor, he can do it when he's--" Kiefer abruptly stops talking when Hassan clubs him from behind with that section of rebar that was holding the door, and the Hassan women scream like panicked hens as he raises his gun at Walker and makes her give him her weapon. While all three women freak at various levels of volume, Hassan calls the commando out into the hall and orders Walker to drag Kiefer into the room. Hassan gives his gun to the commando and surrenders. Dalia continues to argue with him, saying he can't do this, but he says he couldn't live with himself if he didn't. Dalia points out they might be lying and plan to set off the bomb anyway, but he says he has to try. Dalia's yelling in his face that he's going to have to lock her up too, until he physically shoves her away and the commando forces her and Kayla into the room at gunpoint. Kiefer is starting to come around, but it's too late; they're all locked inside. "We've got less than five minutes, we've gotta move," the commando tells Hassan. Through the door's window, Kiefer yells at Hassan not to trust them. Hassan hesitates in following the commando up the stairs, then hurries to catch up. Come on, Hassan, you can keep up with a dude who has a bullet in his leg.
The two men emerge into an alley at 6:06:42. Luckily, the commando is healing in 24 time, meaning he's able to walk unaided now, though with a pronounced limp. The commando finds an SUV with a spare key hidden under the back bumper (whether that's the same SUV his team came in or he just got lucky isn't clear), and while he's doing that, Hassan is staring open-mouthed at all the civilians on the streets, obliviously going about their early morning business. Are these poor suckers up this early every day? he seems to be wondering to himself. As if reading his mind, the commando tells him, "These people owe you their lives, sir. You're doing the right thing." He ushers Hassan into he shotgun seat and dials his phone.
He reaches General Brucker, who's at a spot at McGuire AFB that's suspiciously similar to a location we saw at the U.N. earlier in the season. "You got the package?" Brucker asks. "No, but I got President Omar Hassan," the commando doesn't say. "What package?" Limping around to get behind the wheel of the vehicle, the commando explains about the "complications," namely Kiefer. "He's no longer a problem," he exaggerates. The commando adds that Hassan is cooperating. "He would have given himself up?" Brucker asks incredulously. The commando confirms as much, then gets in the car and starts it up, driving off. They have to get going, because it's not like Hassan is going to hand himself over. Well, he would, but he doesn't know where to go.
Brucker enters Ethan's office to find Rob leaning worriedly over him. "Bishop's on the line, he's got Hassan. Get ready to make the call." Rob opens up some kind of briefcase-laptop-phone thingy, and with less than two minutes, punches in Samir's number. I'm wondering how he got his hands on that without anybody getting suspicious.
Samir answers his sat-phone to hear Rob introducing himself and saying they're ready to make the exchange. "Prove it," Samir says. Listening in, Brucker tells Bishop to "put him on," and Bishop hands the phone to his passenger. It's nice to see them futzing around with four-way conference calls in the final minutes before Manhattan gets terminally X-rayed. "This is President Hassan," Hassan says. "I'm prepared to give myself up if you stop the bomb." Samir gloats about Taylor changing her mind, but Hassan says it was his idea. But when he starts to ask for assurances, Samir shuts that right down. Brucker protests that they did what he wanted, but Samir hangs up. Well, aren't they going to feel stupid in about two minutes?
Tarin has pulled his delivery van into an alley off West Backlot, and watches a siren-blasting police car -- and then countless early-rising civilians -- go by with an open-mouthed expression similar to Hassan's. He looks at his watch, which is counting down the first few seconds of the last minute in the countdown. At 6:09:46, things are tense at CTU. Nobody's moving; not Hastings, not Chloe, not Arlo, not Dana. Looks like they're out of ideas. Manhattan thanks you, last line of defense. Rob and Brucker stand helplessly in Ethan's office, waiting. Taylor goes to the window, like she's going to be able to see it from there. Tarin seems to realize that nobody's coming, so he slowly walks along the side of the van to get back behind the wheel. It's kind of a departure for this show to have such a long, quiet moment at such a critical time, but it really works to ramp up the suspense. The timer LED on the bomb in back reads 22 seconds. A moment after Tarin closes the door, his cell phone rings, and a splitscreen shows the timer, now at 13 seconds. "Yes?" he answers quickly. "Tarin?" Samir says, very slowly, with ten seconds left on the clock. "Stop the bomb." Tarin hits the button with seven seconds to spare, and goes bug-eyed with relief. "Hassan will be arriving there shortly," Samir says. "You know what to do." "Yes, all right," Tarin says breathlessly, and hangs up. It's 6:10:57, and I can think of at least one character who's going to be making use of the commercial break to change his pants.
At 6:15:14, Kiefer's busy smashing through the wire-reinforced glass of the door's window. No hurry or anything. At CTU, Chloe reports that the deadline passed four minutes ago, but no explosions have been reported. Arlo's also got nothing. Hastings points out that the bomb is still out there. "We may have caught a break here. Let's use it." Uh, okay. Just then Chloe's phone rings. Apparently Kiefer hasn't been able to call her until now, and she still can't hear him properly until he gets further up the exit stairs that Hassan and Bishop took earlier. He tells her, "President Hassan is trying to hand himself over to the terrorists. That's why the bomb didn't go off." This is news to Chloe, and Kiefer tells her to keep it quiet until he talks to Taylor. He tells her to set up the call, just as Dana is coming to her desk all nosy-like. Chloe quickly hangs up, and lies to Dana that it was about the search grid. Dana asks if Chloe needs help with that. "I'll ask if I do," Chloe says, not as bitchily as usual, and even favoring Dana with a tiny smile. This doesn't seem to escape Dana as she walks away. I know that if Chloe suddenly started being nice to me, I'd react like the hazmat alarm was going off again.
Kiefer emerges into that same alley at 6:16:25, followed by Walker and the Hassan women. He runs to the nearest corner, which is 7th Avenue. The traffic is flowing from left to right on the screen, which, since 7th is a one-way going south, tells us we're looking at it from the west. I normally wouldn't comment on this, except that we've just learned that the tunnels underneath the U.N. apparently go halfway across the island. And of course there's no sign of Hassan or Bishop; they've been gone so long a flock of pigeons has taken up residence. Kiefer tells Walker to get Dalia and Kayla back to Taylor while he looks for Hassan. Walker not-so-discreetly points out that Hassan made his choice, but as Kiefer says, it's not his call. "President Taylor asked me to protect him, that's what I'm gonna try and do." Well, good luck with that now. He puts the three women in a taxi just as Chloe calls him back with the secure line all ready to go. Spotting a security camera between 53rd and 54th, Kiefer asks her to pull up the feed to see if she can track Hassan from there. Good thing she knows how to multitask. And has figured out how everything at CTU works in the last twelve hours.
Taylor enters the Situation Room, asking Brucker why the bomb didn't go off. He pretends not to know why, and agrees with her guess that they got lucky, like he said. As for her question as to when Hassan is expected, Brucker can't help her with that. At his side, Rob offers to look into that, but Taylor still wants him to find Ethan instead. Dude was missing all night and now she suddenly can't get along without him for ten minutes?
Just then an aide gives Taylor a phone, saying it's an urgent call from Homeland Security. She picks it up as Rob and Brucker step away, and hears Kiefer say, "Madam President, this is Jack Bauer. Please don't say my name or react openly to what I'm about to tell you." She obeys as Kiefer quickly tells her the situation with Hassan. "As we speak, they are preparing to hand him over to the terrorists. I'm assuming that is still something that is unacceptable to you." Taylor confirms it, and Kiefer says he needs to find out where the exchange is supposed to happen, which means Taylor needs to confront Brucker. After she gets off the phone, Taylor quietly tells a Secret Service agent, "Come with me, please." I think he'd have to obey even if she didn't say the magic word.
After Taylor hangs up with Kiefer, Chloe's still on the line with him, and she's found security footage of Hassan getting into the black SUV with Bishop at 6:08-ish. She tracked them west on 53rd street, then lost them turning north on 10th Ave. The amazing thing is that both of those directions are geographically possible. Kiefer tells her to redirect satellites to the Upper West Side, which I'd think would be tricky to do without anyone else at CTU noticing, but then nobody else at CTU ever seems to do anything. Kiefer tells her he's on his way. Fortunately for him, a guy has just gotten out of a shiny black Hyundai Genesis, which the camera lingers on lovingly for a moment before Kiefer hops in and takes off, to the owner's noisy chagrin. Kiefer pulls an illegal U-ey on the one-way street, because I guess in this version of Manhattan, you can't drive through the fourth wall. How do I keep ending up recapping these Hyundai commercials in the middle of TV shows? In any case, I do appreciate the clear message in this scene, which is, Hyundai: super-easy to steal.
At 6:20:22, Bishop drives Hassan onto West Backlot Avenue, apparently having received instructions to proceed there. Tarin watches from the window of a diner, and while I was joking earlier, he actually did change his clothes during the break; he's out of his delivery uniform and back in his suit, with his Bluetooth on. The SUV stops across the street from where he's standing. "What now?" Hassan wonders. Bishop doesn't know. A cell phone in Hassan's pocket rings (it's either his own or he just forgot to give Bishop's back to him earlier) and Hassan answers. Tarin tells Hassan to give the phone to Bishop. Hassan recognizes his ex-security chief's voice, and Tarin repeats the order. This time Hassan obeys. Once Bishop's o
n the line, Tarin instructs him to get out of the car, leaving the keys and taking the phone. Bishop does. Tarin looks across the street, seeing a growing crowd of pedestrians waiting to cross from the far side. He steps out of the diner to approach the corner, ordering Bishop to do the same from his side. Artfully using a coffee cup to hide his moving lips, Tarin tells Bishop to cross when the light changes, and drops a set of keys on the sidewalk on his own side. Bishop wants the bomb, but when the light changes (giving us a glimpse of a sign telling us the cross street is 93rd), Tarin just tells Bishop to start walking. They both cross, and Bishop passes within inches of Tarin without Bishop noticing. Once they're both across, Tarin tells Bishop, "Stop now. Don't turn around or you get nothing. Stand there and wait." While walking to the SUV, Tarin directs Bishop to the keys on the ground, then gets in the SUV with Hassan, cuffs him to the dash, and drives off. I guess he and Bishop are done talking. Bishop gives chase for about three limping steps, but is left standing on the corner with nothing but a set of keys. Not much to show for an operation that cost him all his men and left him with a gunshot wound whose effects may linger for minutes.
Taylor and a few soldiers meet up with that Secret Service agent from earlier, who seems to be totally in the loop. He's located General Brucker in Ethan's office, with Rob, who appears to be his accomplice. Taylor's stunned, but she says, "Okay, do it."
After a minute of wandering up and down West Backlot, Bishop has found the van in the alley whose logo matches the one on the key ring he found. He unlocks and carefully opens the back door at 6:24:02. We don't see what he sees, at first, but at least nothing seems to be exploding. At the same time, Taylor is with the agents, who burst into Ethan's office with guns leveled, yelling at Rob and Brucker not to move. Once they're secured, the lead agent calls Taylor in so she can see Ethan insensible on the couch, but still alive. "Get him out of here!" she yells, meaning Brucker, and the general is led out. Didn't Kiefer tell her to confront him? Rob isn't so lucky. "Where is President Hassan?" she demands, facing off against him. Rob doesn't say anything. "Damn you, Rob, where is he?" she repeats. You know when your boss damns you, you are so not getting a bonus at the review period. Rob claims not to know, and she smacks him across the face, yelling, "Don't lie to me! Tell me where he is!" Yikes, I've had some awkward moments with bosses in the past, but I've never been smacked by one. Of course, I've never been complicit in handing over any of my bosses' friends to terrorists. I think we're all learning something tonight. Still, Rob refuses. "And if it makes any difference, this was not an easy decision," he adds, not helping himself at all. Taylor angrily says it wasn't his decision to make. "With all due respect, you were not elected to sentence tens of thousands of Americans to death!" he says. Taylor doesn't see it that way: She's pissed about the peace agreement going down the shitter, but he insists he protected New York, "and given you plausible deniability in an impossible situation." "I don't want deniability, I want Hassan!" she says. She repeats her question, but when he still doesn't talk, she says, "The charge is treason. It carries the death penalty, and so help me God, I'll throw the switch myself." Rob stays mum, but when she says it's not too late, she's immediately proven wrong by the cell phone ringing in his pocket. It's Bishop, texting him instead of Brucker for some reason. "It is too late," Rob says. "They have Hassan. We have the bomb." Sure enough, the text on the screen says "Swap complete. Bomb in hand. 93rd & Amsterdam." It also says 6:26 AM. I do appreciate when clocks on the screen match the purported time. That can't always be easy. Taylor isn't too high-and-mighty to relay the bomb's location to her lead agent, who starts making calls. Then she turns back to Rob and damns him again, this time in a whisper. "Really, Madam President?" Rob protests. "New York City is safe." And I don't think HR looks kindly on bosses damning people. "Take him away," Taylor orders. They do, and she looks back at Ethan, still unconscious on the couch. Back in the city, Bishop is still standing by the bomb in the van, still at seven seconds. It's 6:26:42. Maybe you want to close that van door, Sunshine.
This is a tough one, dude. I want to be all righteously indignant about Rob and Brucker's betrayal, but I just can't seem to pull it off, and you know how idealistic I can get when it comes to this show. Taylor's argument that Rob derailed the peace process is pretty specious, because the bomb going off would have put an even more decisive end to it. And while I respect the principle, I can't totally get behind the idea of letting the dirty bomb go off. Maybe I'm biased by my feelings for New York and my friends there, and maybe that's why it's a good thing I'm not the one who has to make these decisions. But I think we can all agree that Taylor made one big mistake, and that was sidelining Kiefer to Hassan's protection detail. Up on the surface, he would have found the bomb with twelve seconds to spare.
6:31:03. Hastings calls for everyone's attention to give an update on the talk he just had with the president, including the news of the Hassan/bomb swap that just occurred, and how their new project is to try to get Hassan back. Arlo says the satellite feed at 93rd is up, and he's barely finished speaking when the overhead lights suddenly come back on, all by themselves. "Looks like we're back in business. Put it up on screen, Arlo," Hastings says, literally rubbing his hands. Indeed, everything in the building is suddenly working properly, and soon they're all looking at the big screen showing the spot where Hassan was handed over, complete with a still of Bishop's SUV arriving. There's a shot of a figure at the vehicle, but it disappears before Chloe can enhance it. That was a weird moment. Hastings assigns Dana and Chloe to find the vehicle. Dana gets up, but to leave the floor, reaching for her cell phone. Chloe calls her back, and when Dana claims she was going to reroute some servers, Chloe tells her to put it off so they can get started already. Dana slowly returns to her desk at 6:32:22. Does she really need to call and warn the bad guys? Couldn't she just "find" Hassan in Connecticut?
A bomb-defusing robot is approaching the van while Kiefer supervises. Looks like it's all under control, other than the fact that the early-morning light washes everything out so much this looks like it's shot in black-and-white except for the van's taillights. As for Bishop, he's in handcuffs, and Kiefer orders him brought back to Holding and Medical. I guess the shot-up leg will go to one place while the rest of him goes to the other. Bishop tells Kiefer, "We succeeded. We saved Manhattan." "You betrayed your president and your country," Kiefer says, freaking me out by being more idealistic than I am for once. "Get him out of here." Right on cue, Chloe calls and reports that Hassan's heading north on Amsterdam in a black SUV, 30 blocks ahead. Clearly Tarin drives more slowly than Bishop does, so who's the real terrorist here? Hastings, also on the line, tells Kiefer that Taylor wants him to lead the operation to recover Hassan. Because the operation he led to protect him went so spectacularly. Kiefer gives orders to set up an ambush to catch Tarin up ahead. Cole, who Chloe says is on his way back to CTU, will be running it from there, and Chloe will keep Kiefer updated on the SUV's progress. What could go wrong?
Oh, right, Dana. From her desk, she can see on the security feed that Cole's back. "I'll go get him," she offers, as though the head of Field Ops couldn't find his own way in. Any excuse to get away from the floor with her cell phone, I guess. She's already dialing while walking to the security tunnel. It's 6:33:55 as it rings and rings. By the time Tarin answers, Cole is already inside, so she quickly hangs up. Now, if Tarin were Kiefer, that non-versation would be enough for him to turn around and bring Hassan right back to West Backlot, which is why it's a shame he isn't. At CTU, Dana meets Cole with an innocent smile. They walk in together while she updates him on the swap that happened, and he asks about the probation officer. She lies that she convinced him she didn't know anything and he left. "We're gonna get through this, you and me," he assures her. I can't wait to see what they talk about on their honeymoon.
Hassan tries to appeal to Tarin, suggesting he stop the car. "Stand against me at home. Join the opposition. Fight me openly, honorably." Tarin points out that Hassan has already lost. Hassan guesses at the plan: "You'll put me on trial? Dark room and a video camera, I suppose. A man hiding behind a mask will read a list of my crimes and cut off my head with a sword? The world will be impressed." Tarin claims Hassan did worse, but Hassan says he did it to make the country stronger. "I wanted us to join the world. I wanted to have peace." "You wanted the cover of Time Magazine!" Tarin yells at him. "You think I don't know you, Omar? I watched over you day and night, remember? Watched over you while you betrayed your own wife with a Western whore. You care for nothing but yourself." Wow, judgy much? Hassan admits he's made mistakes, "but believing in peace was not one of them." "Think whatever you like," Tarin says. "You won't be around to find out." Hassan looks sad, and even a little teary. It's 6:36:48. Who knew he'd miss his Western whore so much?
6:41:04. Taylor waits pensively outside Ethan's office until he's wheeled out on a gurney, with an oxygen mask strapped to his face. She tells him he'll be treated on base, "but then I want you right back here," she says warmly. "That's an order." She makes the medics stop so she can lean in and say, "You have always been true to me, Ethan. I need you now. Hurry back." Maybe she's trying to motivate him to recover by appealing to his sense of duty, but jeez, lady, let the poor dude have some sick time. Maybe you could let him recover for at least as long as his heart attack lasted. Now Taylor has to deal with Dalia and Kayla Hassan, who have just arrived. Walker's in the room with them as Taylor greets them, and has to tell them that Hassan is "in the hands of the terrorists, but we're tracking him on satellite." She offers to let them watch in the Situation Room, and says she'll be right there as she sends them on ahead. So, everyone on the national security team is cool with her inviting the first family of the IRK into the Sit Room? I guess it doesn't count if it's not the real one. Before following them, she turns to Walker and says seriously, "I didn't expect to see you again, Ms. Walker." Walker looks a little nervous. "But in these last few hours I have learned how few people I can really trust. I am glad you're here." Walker looks a little surprised as she thanks her, but says she can do more at CTU. Taylor says her aide will get her a car, and she clasps Walker's hand gratefully before joining the Hassans in the Sit Room at 6:43:16. So even if Hastings does decide to go after her, that sounds like an implied presidential pardon to me. Not that those aren't passed out like candy on this show.
In the Sit Room, Taylor tells Dalia and Kayla that Kiefer's running the operation, and they're expecting an intercept in a few minutes. The big screen shows the feed from CTU, with a map of the island on one half of the screen and an overhead view of Amsterdam Avenue on the other. You see it like that, and it makes you wonder what they hell they're waiting for. Have an NYPD SWAT van T-bone the sucker and have done with it.
From the CTU floor, Cole reports to Kiefer that Hassan just crossed 130th. 37 short blocks in 20 minutes? Finally, rush-hour traffic comes into play on this show. Kiefer responds that he's on 110th and asks about the ambush. Cole's got it all under control; the bridges and tunnels are still closed, and as my Streetwise map tells me, there's not a whole lot of Manhattan left in that direction. He adds that the SUV will be there in eight minutes, and Chloe offers to futz with the traffic lights along the route to slow Tarin down even more. Can she make the lights go from red to infrared, which would mean back up a block? As Hastings leaves the floor to go update Taylor, Dana tells Cole that some potential technobabble problem requires her to go check out Chloe's trunk line patch-up. Even though Chloe says it's fine, Dana still needs her excuse to leave her desk, which she does. Chloe thinks it's a little weird, but Cole's glad she's on the case.
Dana lets herself into the server room at 6:45:06, and sits right down at a terminal. Soon she's got a map of Manhattan up on the screen, then turns around to see Arlo standing there. Oops, someone forgot to check that she was alone. "Arlo, what are you doing here?" she asks, quickly closing the window like when you hear your boss coming while you're reading this. He turns the question back around on her. She claims she was checking the trunk line, which he doesn't buy. He's also wondering why things keep going down. Dana patiently explains about the EMP. "It's a miracle we managed to get anything up and running as fast as we did." Yeah, I've been thinking that for a while too, but it hasn't gotten me anywhere. Arlo keeps quizzing her, and she says she was running a diagnostic on the trunk line. "Why were you looking at a map of Manhattan if you were running an internal diagnostic?" Arlo wonders. She claims she was just checking on the operation. "How I do my work is none of your business, Arlo," she adds, having put up with this a lot longer than she would have if she were innocent. Arlo says that since he's been covering for her all night, it kind of is. Dana gets up and offers to let him check himself. So he sits down at the terminal. She continues to technobabble at him while he taps away at the keyboard, continuing to ask her questions, and not buying a word of it. But since she's currently picking up a headset cord -- and we know what she can do with a cord -- it doesn't really seem to matter. At least not until he gets a call on his headset just as she's about to throw the cable down around his neck. Of course you can't garrote someone whose hand is up to his ear, and then you can't do it when he's on the phone with someone, so she holds off. It's Chloe, telling Arlo that Hastings wants him back on the floor. He gets up, saying, "I'll leave you to do...whatever you're doing." She gives him a dirty look and says, "Don't push it, Arlo." He leaves, never knowing about the rolled up cable she's now hiding behind her back. He probably would have been into it, though.
Finally, she can call Tarin. "CTU is following you," she hisses into her phone. Tarin freaks, wondering where they are. "They're all over you," she says, somehow making it sound hot. "There's an ambush set for 161st." Too bad Tarin isn't on his way to 160th. He's pissed that he's only hearing this now, and Dana tells him to chill. "We knew this might happen." She tells him to turn into a parking garage at 158th and 159th. "Is everyone ready for this?" Tarin asks. Dana says she'll tell Samir and it'll be up to him. "It's only a matter of time before this gets traced back to me. I need to get the hell out of here while I still can." Now that I can get behind. They hang up at 6:48:25.
6:52:43. The monitoring of the Hassan-mobile is in progress both at McGuire AFB and at CTU. Dana returns to the floor, presumably having been on the phone with Samir through the whole commercial break, and Cole whispers, "You took your time." She claims it got complicated, which, I'm sure it did, but assures him that the trunk line should hold up. Cole asks for an ETA on the ambush, and Chloe tells him four minutes. Kiefer's still five blocks behind and can't see the Hassan-mobile, but the TAC teams are in position. Kiefer hits the gas, and we get the barest glimpse of the Genesis nametag before it surges sexily though traffic. Buy one before it gets away!
Up ahead, Hassan hasn't failed to notice Tarin's increasingly panicked looks into his rearview mirror, and remarks, "We are being followed, aren't we?" He goads Tarin a bit, and tells him it's not too late to give himself up. Tarin just wants him to shut up, but Hassan won't. "You're on an island here. There's no way out. They'll find you." Tarin agrees with that. "But not soon enough." By now, Kiefer can see them, a block and a half ahead, as Tarin whips the wheel to the left. "Dammi
t, they've made us," Kiefer says. Tarin tire-screeches into a parking lot at 6:54:52. Kiefer and CTU react quickly, telling the TAC team to cover one of the ramp's two exits while Kiefer and his Hyundai cover the other. Cole orders his teams to reposition, and they get moving very fast, from rooftops to their cars in seconds. At this rate they'll cover the three blocks quickly enough to run circles around Tarin. Back at the garage, Tarin emerges from the far side to find Kiefer's little stolen car blocking his way, and reverses back into the garage. Kiefer guns it in pursuit while Cole says everyone else is moving in. Tarin heads up inside the ramp at top speed. "He's running for the roof," Kiefer reports. He briefly loses him as a car pulls out in front of him, because if one car crosses your path at a high speed, you want to be sure and make your move before the car pursuing it has a chance to go past. "Move! Move! Kiefer screams, leaning on the horn, like Tarin has anywhere to go. Tarin's on the ramp's roof by now. He whips around in a bootlegger's turn, and floors it along the length of the top parking level. Kiefer comes out and tries to block him again, but Tarin just swerves around him. Lucky for Tarin nobody seems to want to park on the roof. Or is it? The SUV hits the edge of the roof and flips over the barrier, doing a barrel roll in midair before landing on its roof and bouncing upright, three levels below. The Hassans in the Sit Room, watching live via satellite, gasp in horror. Kiefer runs to the edge and looks down, asking Chloe if she can see any movement on the satellite feed. "No one could survive that," she says, because suddenly she's a crash expert. Kiefer scampers down the stairs and draws his gun as he approaches, but there's no one in the SUV but Tarin. And I sure as hell didn't see Hassan being thrown clear while the truck plummeted to the ground.
In fact, Hassan is currently being given an injection while lying in the trunk of a car. Tarin must have dumped him fast; he wasn't out of sight for more than a few seconds. The man who gave him the shot tells a Middle Eastern woman in a blonde pageboy wig -- who will be driving the car -- to get going already. Outside, Kiefer pries the door of the totaled SUV open and checks Tarin's nonexistent pulse. Looks like Tarin finally ran out of lives. But his cell phone is on the floorboards, presumably still alive. Sloppy, Tarin. Kiefer snags it and calls Walker on his own phone. She's currently in the back of a car being driven back to CTU. Kiefer quickly tells her what happened: "He managed to transfer Hassan to another vehicle before I could get to him. Someone inside CTU's got to be tipping them off." The good news is that he has the cell phone, and they can uplink it to figure out who that person is. Wouldn't it be awesome if just once, the CTU mole turned out to be some random extra we'd never heard of? I guess we're running out of opportunities for that, though. Walker offers to talk to Chloe when she gets back to CTU. "But no one else," Kiefer instructs. "Tell her we need a secure area to run the uplink. Get back to me as soon as you're ready." The TAC teams are just arriving, apparently having hit every red light, and Kiefer orders them to search the parking structure. A little late; at this moment, the Honda with Hassan in the trunk and the non-blonde at the wheel is pulling out onto the street, totally unhindered. It's 7:00:00, and this ending has been brought to you by yet another shit-ass CTU perimeter.
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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.