Previously on 24, we learned: Nobody walks around London at night – they only ride the escalator in subway stations; The real reason Steve was arrested: He shot some beer kegs, which in some parts of England is still a hanging offense; Kate is REALLY good (and REALLY scary) during an interrogation; The Russians still think they can handle Jack, not realizing they’re against Jack AND Kate; Adrian’s attempt at becoming a professional bullet catcher did not end well; Cheng came back to play the biggest game of Battleship ever; when Chloe cries, Chinese ships explode.
The following takes place between 9pm and 10pm:
9pm – The President is getting debriefed, and for some reason Audrey is in the room. It’s OK though, because no one appears to see her. An admiral announces that the Chinese carrier has spontaneously sprung mysterious leaks, due to mysterious explosions. They’re pretty sure the leaks are coming from the holes in the ship.
Jack and Kate have been in a gun fight since last week, and it’s still continuing. Kate suspects that these might be Adrian’s guys. Jack thinks that if it had been Adrian’s guys, they would have had their credit cards hacked. He thinks it’s something more.
Cheng is looking over his 1-0 lead in his Battleship game, feeling pretty smug. Chloe asks why he’d attack his own country. It turns out that Cheng is a little bit ticked off at China. He says it’s not his country anymore, but we’re not really sure it was his to begin with. It’s a pretty big place.
One of Cheng’s henchmen is channel surfing and notices there’s a pretty realistic gunfight happening on the “Jack vs the Russians” channel. Cheng, being super paranoid (and a little egotistical), thinks this is all about him. After finding a bottle cap he’s convinced is a tracking device, Cheng tells everyone to pack up and leave.
Chloe, meanwhile, notices an iPhone on the ground. She tries to use her mental powers to make it move into her hand by staring at it, but fails. She falls on the phone on the way out, but Cheng notices and takes the phone from her. That model is not available in China yet.
Outside, Jack and Kate practice Just-In-Time gun management techniques and run out of bullets just as backup arrives. The federal agents announce themselves as “Federal Agents”, which is kind of a weird thing to say in a foreign country where they have zero authority. It works though, because the Russians give up.
Jack tells everyone the override device hasn’t moved. This is a good thing because a self-aware mobile override device is the LAST thing they need right now. Jack announces he’s going after it.
9:06 pm – Jack goes into the building, pointing his gun at thin air the whole time. The air doesn’t move, so he doesn’t have to shoot it. He finds the room where Chloe and Cheng were, looks a little upset about all the dead bodies, but is much more upset that there’s a fake override device transmitter just sitting on the desk.
Kate arrives. She doesn’t seem very upset about all the dead bodies, or the fact that Jack might have shot them all. She finds a phone though, that just happened to be recording everything since the person died. Why in the world would someone who died sometime last hour just happened to be recording something, and how they happened to have enough spare room to do all that recording… well, it’s a mystery.
It’s also a mystery how it recorded Cheng talking, but nothing about what Kate and Jack just said. But that’s not important. What is important is that Jack starts twitching as soon as Kate plays the recording, when Jack hears Cheng’s voice.
At the embassy, where the President and his entourage are staying, there’s a news report. The reporter seems really distressed that the Chinese carrier might have lost thousands of people. The reporter does not seem to be the least bit distressed that there was a CHINESE CARRIER IN THE MEDITERRANEAN OFF THE COAST OF GIBRALTAR. Nope. Nothing odd about that.
Jack calls the President and tells him Cheng is alive. Audrey looks visibly disturbed by this news. Ok…check that… Audrey looks even more visibly disturbed than she normally does. The President goes into this “talking to kindergarteners” voice and tells Jack that Cheng is dead. The President says knows Cheng is dead because some Chinese spy source swears it’s true, and who wouldn’t believe a Chinese spy over Jack Bauer. The President has also put on his super sleuth hat and has deduced that the override device was used to help blow up the Chinese carrier.
Jack tells The President that he’s pretty sure Cheng is working with the Russians, since they showed up earlier. As soon as The President hears “Russians”, Mark looks like he just created his own perimeter. The President tells Jack to get the device back so they can prove they had nothing to do with sinking the ship. Apart from owning the missiles. And the ship that shot them.
Audrey’s having a full on panic attack now that she knows Cheng is alive. Or it might just be one of her regularly scheduled panic attacks.
At makeshift CIA headquarters, everyone is pretty much useless because Chloe doesn’t work there anymore. They tell Jack that they have a lot of computers, but have no idea where the heck Cheng is. They do tell Jack that the Russians used his secret decoder ring frequency to track him. Only makeshift CIA headquarters and Mark knew about the code. Jack doesn’t look happy, and leaves Adrian’s Dead Hacker Lair.
COMMERCIAL
9:16 pm – Cheng and company are in a UPS van. Cheng calls the Russian consulate guy, sounding a lot like Senior Chang. Cheng is worried about Jack, because he’s pretty sure Jack holds a grudge. The Russian tells Cheng that he’ll be able to leave the country via a Danish ship. Cheng gets excited until he’s told that it’s just a regular ship and has no pastries on it.
Kate is confused about why Cheng would want to start a war between China and the United States. Jack says that’s because “the political landscape shifted” 10 years ago. Kate says, “What, like an earthquake?” Jack looks disturbed and says, “Uh…yeah, just like an earthquake.” He goes on to explain that everyone in the intelligence community thought Cheng was dead. That’s going to be quick a discussion thread on their message boards, ha ha! Kate wonders why Mark would have anything to do with this, and Jack looks anxious to “discuss” this with Mark in person.
Mark tries to convince Audrey to leave the room with all this going on. She says, “I like to think my country needs me too.”
On behalf of the country, I would say “no”.
The President takes a video call from The Chinese President, who looks a lot like Mikhail Gorbachov. The President tries to give The Chinese President the old “Whoops! It wasn’t us! It was a bad guy!” excuse. While this is actually true, The Chinese President doesn’t believe that. And he REALLY doesn’t believe that Cheng is still alive. The President tries to pinky swear it’s true, but The Chinese President doesn’t believe him. He only tells Heller, “What ever happens today is on your head.” The video goes blank. Heller freaks out, thinking something is in his hair, until someone explains to him what the expression means.
The President tells everyone that they should help Jack get whatever he needs to get Cheng. He puts Mark in charge. Mark lets out a nervous, hysterical laugh, but catches himself before anyone notices.
Audrey, thinking she still has some role to play in all this, says she has a secret friend from China that might be able to help. Heller plays along, thinking this is another one of Audrey’s “special friends”. It turns out it’s a real person who Audrey met while previously working with China. Now, why Audrey would have been working with anyone remotely associated with China after what she went through before with Cheng, I have no idea. But she did. Her contact’s name is Shao. Audrey thinks by letting the Chinese know there’s a weakness in America’s defense systems, she can convince them that the whole “blowing up the ship thing” was a mistake. Heller doesn’t seem the least bit alarmed about letting the Chinese know about weaknesses in America’s defense systems, so he lets her try this.
While this has been going on, the Chinese have been busy sending in planes and ships towards something. What something? Nobody knows, but it is probably a bad thing.
COMMERCIAL
9:27 pm – Jack calls Audrey. Mystic “Risky Business” music plays in the background. Jack’s about to tell her about Cheng, but she already knew because she was eavesdropping on her father’s phone call. Jack says some thing are going to happen soon, that he’s pretty sure she won’t like. Audrey blows this off, because, I mean, what could Jack POSSIBLY do that’s so bad, right? Oh, and she wants Jack to kill Cheng. A lot.
The President is getting a briefing, which is nice because he lost his briefs when he was debriefed earlier this hour. The military guys tell him that the Chinese appear to getting ready to attack Okinawa. One of the military guys really wants to pull out the nuclear weapons, because it’d be really cool. The President disagrees, just as Jack arrives. Jack requests a meeting with The President and Mark.
They go into another room where Jack pulls his gun on Mark. Jack wants Mark to confess about sending the Russians after him. Since the “Sorry!” thing seems like the thing to say, since the President just got done using that with the Chinese, Mark attempts to use that excuse. Heller reacts basically the same way The Chinese President did.
Jack points out that the Russian deputy minister is really a super duper spy, and calls Mark the “I” word. Heller wants to have Mark arrested, but Jack thinks it would be a lot more fun to take Mark on a “Ride Along” since he recently saw that movie.
COMMERCIAL
9:38 pm – Erik sends information about the Russian deputy minister’s home to Kate, Jack and Mark as they drive towards it. Kate and Jack seem completely calm about the whole thing. Mark is on his third set of Depends. Kate gives Mark a device to put in his ear, and a camera to put on his lapel for when he goes up to the house. This obviously will work, because cameras and communication devices are almost never ever detected by other spies. Mark wants to know what happens if “the bullets start to fly”. Jack wants to tell him “Bullets don’t fly! They’re SHOT!”, but tells him to stay low instead. Mark tries to apologize to Jack, but doesn’t sound very convincing.
In the UPS van, Cheng and his guys are wondering why hacking into port security is taking so long, since getting into world’s defense systems is so easy. When Cheng’s security guy tries to explain iptables in greater detail, Chloe sees her chance. She grabs a metal bar and starts going all Jack Bauer on everyone. This surprises everyone, including Chloe. Before they have a chance to react, Chloe jumps from the van into the woods. All the guys leave the van. Chloe rolls down a hill, apparently knocking herself unconscious.
As the Chinese look for Chloe, an English military truck pulls up to the pitch black van with the Chinese guy dressed all in pitch black. The soldier in the truck asks if Cheng needs any help. Cheng is about to say that “no, we’ll find her”, but thinks better of it. After offering Cheng some tea, the truck drives off. Cheng decides to leave Chloe. The Chinese get back in the van and leave.
9:43 pm – The military guys inform the President that the Chinese are still on their way to Okinawa. A staff guy tells Heller that Prime Minster Stephen Fry tried to explain about the override device, but The Chinese President couldn’t understand his English accent.
Heller pulls out some pills out and spills them all over the floor. He bends down to pick them up, and everyone tries to help him. No one says anything, but Heller shoots them a “If Anyone Makes a ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” Joke, They’re In Big Trouble” look.
One of the officers gets a phone call. The Chinese have fired missiles! And it turns out the super-secret surveillance satellites are now out of commission, and also not as super-secret as previously thought.
The other military guy suggests raising the Defcon level to 3. Heller agrees, and says they should also raise the ComicCon level to 3, just to be safe.
COMMERCIAL
9:48 pm – Kate, Mark and Jack arrive at the Russian’s house. Jack wishes Mark “good luck” while laughing under his breath so far we can’t even tell he’s doing it.
Mark goes to the front gate and asks to be let in to see the Russian deputy minister, which surprisingly doesn’t work. The guy at the gate tells him to go away, or he’ll taunt Mark a second time.
Mark insists on taking to the deputy minister on the phone, which he’s finally given. Mark tells the minister that Heller knows about the forged signature and he wants asylum. Mark also says he’s too cute to go to prison, and he’s scared. Mark swears he’ll be a great asset because he’s attended intelligence briefings, he knows things about what’s going on in Washington, and all the secrets about Area 52, which is even more secret than Area 51. This last part convinces the deputy minister, and after a brief ineffective search, Mark is let in.
When they get to the security panel, Jack asks Mark to move closer to it, which didn’t look at all suspicious to anyone. Makeshift CIA seems to be surprised that the security is so high.
The deputy minister comes downstairs and tells Mark to follow him. The Russian security for rooms is similar to the CIA, because the room they go into has a glass door. Mark tells the minister that he’ll need money, which appears to be the thing that convinces the minister.
CIA jams the security system, the gates open and the shooting begins! Also, all the security cameras that the minister was watching go blank, so he gets suspicious. He goes for his gun and there’s struggle!
While Kate and Jack shoot various security people and tissue boxes explode all around them, the deputy minister and Mark go crashing through the glass door!
The Russian Deputy Minister finally learns why a glass door is a stupid thing to have to his office, because parts of it stick out of his neck. He pulls out the glass and blood spurts everywhere, which is going to make the security deposit on this house he’s renting a lot harder to get back.
Jack arrives and tries to stop the bleeding by holding a towel to the minister’s neck, and by yelling at him, asking where Cheng is. Yelling at him was the wrong thing to do, and he dies. Jack, for the first time in a long while, looks perplexed about what to do next.
9:56pm – Audrey meets with her friend Shao at the park. Audrey tells Shao about Cheng being alive. Then Audrey tells Shao about the device that can take over all the drones that exist, something I’m sure the Chinese would love to know. Audrey gives Shao a big hug as she leaves.
It turns out that was the last hug Shao was ever going to get because a bullet hits her, and she goes down. So do both Secret Service guys with Audrey. Audrey doesn’t quite understand that bullets, hitting the ground and blood means “a bad thing”and doesn’t move out of the way.
Her phone rings. It’s Cheng! He tells Audrey to sit down! Oh no! He tells Audrey, “You may be allowed to live!” NOoooooooOOOOooo!
TIME’S UP! – Well, that’s it for the show. Audrey was recaptured by the Chinese and everyone’s happy! …WAIT! There’s another hour? But that’s the happy ending everyone was hoping for… aw….. ok. Well, in that case…
NEXT TIME ON “24” – GUN ON AUDREY! FORCES ENGAGING! CHLOE IS BACK! HELLER COLLAPSES! SHOOTING! CASKETS!