Tonight on 24, Jack Bauer successfully outran a drone, while Heller made a really stupid decision, mole Benjamin Bratt revealed who he's working for (kind of) and chief of staff Mark Boudreau also showed his true colors to the Russian ambassador. But of course we start with Jack, who frees his pal Belcheck from MI-5 before hightailing it out of there with Kate to go find Simone, who Chloe tells them has just been hit by a bus and is on her way to the hospital. While on the way, Jack lets Heller have it for the MI-5 interference with his mission, and Heller in turn tears Davies a new one when he shows up to not quite apologize for what he did. Heller also denies to the PM that his health is any kind of an issue, but he looks dubious about that as he exits the room.
Meanwhile Margot calls Simone's phone and finds out from a paramedic what happened. Her first concern of course is whether or not Simone took care of the sister-in-law and her daughter, so she sends a random henchman Kareem (who happens to be in the area) over to the hospital. When Jack and Kate arrive, Kate goes to talk to little Yasmine, while Jack makes the doctors perform the old "get her stable and conscious" routine so he can question her, even if she might not survive. Kate finds out from Yasmine (who seems remarkably alert and perceptive for a kid who saw her mom get murdered) pretty much everything that happened, so she calls Jack to tell him that they might be able to turn Simone pretty easily, given that she was trying to protect the girl. But of course, Kareem has disguised himself as a nurse and overhears her, reporting back to Margot, who decides instantly to target the hospital with a drone. When Simone is woken up, Jack tries at first to play on her sympathies but she refuses to budge for him, so he can't help himself and resorts to his first instinct, pressing down on her missing finger wound. It doesn't work and Kate sees and is mildly perturbed, so Jack expresses regret for maybe the first time ever, saying he shouldn't have done that, but he just hates "these people," and boy does he sound tired of dealing with terrorists. After the ninth worst day of his life, I guess it would wear on you after a while.
Suddenly, Jack notices Kareem in the hallway, who immediately pulls a gun on them, which leads to a chase and a pretty quick death for Kareem, who's shot by security. When Jack sees his texts to Margot he realizes what's happening and the hospital must evacuate in eight minutes. Kate goes after Yasmine (who the doctors apparently abandoned in a corner) while Jack drags out the barely conscious Simone, who at first doesn't believe her mother would do this, but when Jack threatens to leave her there she caves and begs him to save her. Everybody runs out of the hospital and Jack, Kate and Simone make it just barely when the drone hits and blows the place up, leaving wreckage and injury everywhere. Kate hands off Yasmine to an officer while she and Jack get Simone into the car to try to outrun the drone in what's one of the best chase scenes on TV in a while, with Margot using Ian to target them as Jack pulls off some seriously Fast and Furious-worthy driving to outrun this thing. Ian keeps barely missing of course (although the drone's power suddenly seems to be ten times less than what hit the hospital- if that thing got anywhere near Jack's car they'd be pulverized), and is about to run out of missiles when Jack switches cars in a tunnel (by punching out a random citizen to steal his car of course) and uses a brick to send the empty one out of it. Ian nails that one and appears way too excited about blowing up his sister (someone's been playing too many videogames), but Margot quickly realizes it was empty and vents in frustration.
In other subplots tonight, the douchey chief of staff meets with the Russian ambassador, who now somehow knows that Mark forged Heller's signature and tries to blackmail him if he doesn't hand over Jack. Mark agrees to it, saying he just has to wait until Jack's served his purpose with the terror threat first. And back at the CIA, anyone who guessed that Navarro's boss was Adrian Cross turns out to be dead right, as that's almost immediately revealed, although he also claims to be just the "middleman" in the scheme to sell state secrets to China, so there's at least one more level of bad guy we've got climb there. But he tells Steve he has to get rid of Jordan, who won't let this go, so Steve sends poor, naive Jordan out into the field, supposedly to pick up a package by the river, but once there he's clipped by a hitman with terrible aim. Jordan falls into the river, but the shooter can't find him, so last we see of Jordan he's swimming to safety at some other end, and hopefully knows, since it's now incredibly obvious, that he was set up by his boss. Finally, Heller tells Audrey and Mark he's going to resign the presidency, because the health rumors will start to spread soon, but then he keeps getting direct info on how to contact Margot sent to him personally, which he uses at the end of the episode to confront her and agree to surrender himself on her terms. Bad, bad plan Heller. He asks if he can trust her to keep her word that no one else will die (really? Can you trust a terrorist?) and she promises, but this little suicide mission will lead to disaster, like always.
Heller tells Jack, who's on his way with Simone and Kate to the CIA, that he needs to see him, so Jack is dropped off at the residence to hear Heller's terrible plan, but funnily enough, this action fits with everything we've seen of Heller in the past. Think about it- from his kidnapping in season 4 when he tried to gas himself, to President Logan's plot in season 5, where he literally drove his car off a cliff, Heller's immediate plan is always to kill himself before doing anything else. He's never managed to do it successfully of course, but who knows, maybe this time he'll finally pull it off. We'll find out next week when Jack returns with some alternate plan hopefully, and also with more Chloe, who was barely on tonight, as she had to escape from the hacking center when the cops showed up and took refuge in a cafe. See you then!
