Unfortunately, by the time he gets to the garage, the Secret Service is crawling all over the place. How the hell is he going to get out? Time to drive through some roadblocks! The agents don't want to shoot the van because there may be hostages inside. It's a nice idea, but once they get outside, police cars block the van, and Jack has to get out. The only problem is that Jack wasn't driving, it was Chloe. She was just distracting the agents while Jack sneaked out another way! You know, I would have to say it was the FBI's fault for not setting up a hard perimeter around the apartment. It might not have worked, but if they had said hard perimeter, we all would have had another good laugh. Chloe is apprehended, and they soon realize she wasn't under duress, and she won't give up any more information to Buchanan. They decide to bring her back to CTU, hoping she will talk then, while Jack heads to the Ontario Airport. He is going to drop Derrick off there, and calls his mom to meet them at what I believe he said was the intersection of the 10 and the 210, which doesn't exist because they run parallel, but since it would take Jack about an hour to Ontario under normal circumstances, why worry about the details?

Back at the President's retreat, Martha has composed herself a little bit. She has new makeup on, and decided she might as well show some cleavage. Something tells me something is going to happen to her, because the history of the First Ladies on this show is long, but not really distinguished. Walt comes in, and she wonders why her husband won't believe her. Walt says they are looking at the recording, but when Martha goes to meet President Pussy, he plays the tape, and there was a phone call. Martha feels vindicated until she hears the voice of President Palmer inviting her to a charity dinner. President Logan has had enough, tells his wife to take her medicine, and prepares to welcome the Russian President.

Chloe is in custody, and as she is walked into CTU, it looks like Edgar is going to cry. How could she keep a secret from him? How could she have sex with Spencer? He's not even smart enough to parse his work log, or run a stack trace. Since Chloe won't say where Jack is going, everybody assumes that he is going to attack the real President. The NSA has some chatter that says there is a 95% chance that the summit will be targeted, but despite all of this information, President Logan doesn't want to diminish any part of the spectacle he has going, so he won't delay the summit, and if they are worried about somebody taking out the Russian President's helicopter, call in the Air Force. Don't worry so much about security! Think about the television cameras!

Throughout the show, we have been catching glimpses of the mastermind behind all of this. You can tell he is a mastermind because he is in a dark room with lots of plasma screens, and only talks using a headset, because, you know, he's so busy masterminding. The mastermind has been in contact with some random terrorist types. The leader, sporting a nicely generic death to America accent (I'm guessing Chechen), knows about Hoss, and is preparing to attack. His target is not the helicopter transporting the Russian President, which lands safely and without incident, but it's the Ontario airport, the very same Ontario airport where Jack reunited Derrick with his mom.

After apologizing for all of his lies, he tells Diane to drive to CTU and tell them the truth. He was enjoying a hearty breakfast in Bakersfield or wherever he was when CTU thought he was killing the President. Jack leaves to find this Chevensky douche, but when Diane and Derrick are driving away, Derrick notices some guys jumping out of a SWAT-type van, running towards the direction Jack was headed. Despite all that whining about Jack, Derrick decides that he has to follow Jack into the airport to warn him; apparently forgetting Jack has a cell phone. God, Jack has his own kid who gets in the way of him kicking ass, when he started sleeping with Diane, he probably didn't think he would get another dumbass to get in his way.

Jack has found Chevensky, but while he gets him to talk, the terrorists blow up their SWAT van, apparently thinking the more pedestrian practice of firing machine guns in the air and shooting security guards was too subtle. This distracts the Bauer just enough to give Chevensky time to take a cyanide tablet. The terrorists take control of the airport, and Derrick is inside. Diane tries to run in, but of course everybody is running the hell away from her and nobody is getting in.

Usually, the producers try to make us guess about a mole being in CTU, but this time, there was really no misdirection this time. There is somebody that isn't playing nice. We've seen mastermind checking in with him the entire time, but who is it? It's none other than Walt, Mr. "don't call me Josh Lyman" himself. He's been helping the mastermind, including doctoring the audio tape recording of the First Lady's conversation with President Palmer. She wasn't crazy, but now nobody will believe her.

Posted by J-Unit on January 16, 2006 11:14 AM