Jack barricades himself inside the U.S. Embassy in a desperate attempt to get information to Chloe while the President and Audrey finally hear about his presence in London…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
All bets are off when Jack Bauer needs to gain access to a building and as we witnessed in last week’s episode of ’24: Live Another Day’ that includes shooting two civilians to cause a riotous panic so he could get inside the U.S. Embassy in London. You see, Lieutenant Chris Tanner — the pilot who is being accused of firing a drone strike that killed several U.S. and U.K. officers — is being held in the Embassy and Jack needs to question him to find verification that his system was hijacked and he actually had nothing to do with the bombing.
Unfortunately for Bauer, CIA agents Kate Morgan and Erik Ritter spotted him going into the building, and they are alerting all the necessary authorities to his presence.
Interrogation Technique
Four years on the run has made Jack Bauer a softer and kinder man — just kidding he’s still the life cowboy willing to choke out an Embassy security guard to steal his jacket and credentials so he can then break into the room where Tanner is being held before knocking out his guard as well!
Inside, Jack convinces Tanner that he believes his story about the drone being hijacked and controlled by outside forces. But to corroborate Tanner’s version of what actually happened, Jack needs his flight key to tear apart the data and prove that a device could be build that could hack in and take control of a drone. Luckily the guard who was standing in the room with Tanner had the key in his pocket so Jack has his evidence, but he also has a big problem.
The CIA and a whole bunch of Marines are on their way to Tanner’s holding cell to find Jack. Chloe helps him get out of the room and down to the basement where his escape can take place, but before he reaches the exit, the entire building is locked down and he’s got no way to get out of the Embassy.
Plan B
Never to be deterred by minor details like you know, being locked inside an Embassy with an entire military detail searching for him, Jack decides to find the communications room where he can upload the flight key to Chloe so at least she has the information to rebuild the drone-jacking device and get the information over to President Heller. He’ll get captured, but at least his mission won’t be a total loss. Is that self sacrifice or what?
Once he reaches the communications room, Jack runs into another road block — the flight key is encrypted and so Chloe’s hacker boss Adrian has to send him a decoding program to get into the information. He’s only helping out now as a favor to Chloe because in reality he caused all this to happen in the first place when he switched out Jack’s credentials at the Embassy, which forced him to go this route of shooting people and breaking in by any means necessary.
Problem No. 3 — the decrypting program is going to take forever to download and work on the flight key (first world problems right?) so Jack has to cause another diversion to give himself more time. This time he fires off a couple of rounds, shooting two Marines right in the chest to stir up a good old fashioned hostage situation (he shot the men knowing full well they had body armor on and would be completely fine. Jack’s an outlaw but he’s not stupid!).
So now Jack has hostages knowing full well he will eventually be captured, and because this is all happening at the Embassy, the President of the United States has to be informed of what’s going on. FINALLY!
In Terrorist Land
While Jack is trying to thwart the terrorist plans, Cat Stark (I know her name is Margot Al-Hazari but she’ll always be Cat Stark to me) is plotting her drone attacks while her daughter Simone is sexing up her husband Naveed.
It seems Naveed is the man needed to pilot the drones once they hack in and take over the programming, but he’s had some serious second thoughts about killing all of these innocent people. He convinces Simone to escape with him while her mother’s back is turned, but little does he know that she’s much more mommy’s little girl than his faithful wife. She rats him out, but Cat Stark has a plan to turn him back around to keep working for the bad guys.
Instead of threatening to chop him into little pieces, Mommy Dearest instead turns her attention to his loving wife, who also just happens to be her loyal daughter. Cat instructs her good to take a hammer and chisel to Simone’s hand and with one good crack, off flies her pinky. It takes Cat about two seconds to decide to take the ring finger, and Naveed quickly gives in and says he will fly the drones as long as she stops torturing his wife.
While Simone figures out how to play piano with nine fingers, Naveed fires up his computer while Robb Stark (the other Al-Hazari sibling, I missed his name) finishes installing the hack device to take over the drones. Within the hour, the Al-Hazari clan will have multiple U.S. drones under their control with the intention of using all of them to bomb London back to the stone age.
Cue maniacal laugh.
All the President’s Men
If there’s a common theme among the presidents that have appeared on ’24’ over the years, it’s clear that they always have a staff member who is always out to protect them even if it means keeping vital information to themselves. This time around as President Heller struggles with the onset of what we assume is Alzheimer’s disease, his chief of staff Mark Boudreau found out about Jack Bauer’s appearance in London, sent the CIA after him, while also signing an order in the president’s name that will send the former CTU chief to Russia if they capture him.
With Jack hold up with hostages in the Embassy, Mark’s secrecy can’t be contained any longer and he has to let the President and his wife Audrey know what’s going on. He finally reveals that it’s Jack Bauer who has reappeared out of nowhere on the same day the President is visiting London before taking hostages at the Embassy. Audrey is of course shocked considering she almost died trying to save Jack and ended up in a catatonic state after returning from her unsuccessful journey.
President Heller proclaims that he wants to talk to Jack and so a few minutes later he gets on the line with him while the CIA agents are listening in to see what’s being said. Jack informs the President that there’s a plot being hatched where U.S. drones will be hijacked and used against England with him being the final target in the attack. For all his faults and misdeeds the one thing Jack never did was lie to Heller during their years together. President Heller wants to believe everything he’s saying, but given the dire nature with which he stormed the Embassy and took hostages, he has no choice but to allow a Marine garrison to break down the doors and take Bauer — dead or alive.
Needless to say Audrey is pissed at Mark for not telling her Jack was alive, while also keeping this information away from her father because he is the freaking President of the United States after all.
Jack’s Only Play
With time running out and the Marines about the come through the door like the Kool-Aid guy, Jack tries to think of every possibly way to stall them long enough so his flight key data can upload to Chloe. While all of this is going on, Kate figures out a way to slip into the room in hopes of convincing Jack that she’s the one person who believes him the same way he convinced Tanner upstairs.
Kate gets through to the communications room and pleads with Jack to turn himself in with the promise that she believes his story about the hijacked drones. The upload still isn’t finished and there’s no way it’s going to get done before the military men blast through and take Jack with them. Sure enough, moments later the door explodes and as the Marines burst in with guns drawn, Kate has Jack on the floor where he’s turned himself in. The flight key is missing but obviously it’s somewhere in Kate’s pocket. She proclaims that Jack is a prisoner of the CIA and now he’s untouchable to the Marines.
As she puts the handcuffs on Jack, he looks perplexed wondering if he trusted the right woman. Given his history, Jack’s instincts are almost always right on the money except for the people with the XX chromosomes so he’s curious if Kate is really on the level or if she’s playing him.
On next week’s 24: Live Another Day, it seems Margot’s plan is unfurled as her threats are made public and everyone goes ‘oh shit, maybe we should have listened to Jack Bauer in the first place!’ (I ad libbed that part, but you get the idea).
