24 Day Five, 3-4 PM: Jack. Bauer.

A man so great he requires two periods for his name.

This week's episode of 24 has Jack Bauer going rogue once again in the pursuit of finding the nerve gas. After Bauer went against orders in the shopping mall, President Logan gives Lynn McGill, our hobbit buddy, a new hole in his body. This, of course, sours McGill even more so than being mugged by your sister and her boyfriend. McGill goes on a rampage and calls for Bauer to be taken into custody for his insubordination. This is all daisies for Jack considering there aren't any leads to follow, so Jack goes with Curtis peacefully. Before they head out, Audrey patches a call in from Nathanson, the man in charge of the entire "patriot" side of the operation involving the Russian terrorists. Nathanson offers to help Bauer find the nerve gas if he will meet with him and give him protection from the Russian terrorists he had planned to double-cross. Bauer decides to go rogue and knocks Curtis out in order to make the meeting. Unfortunately, Nathanson was followed by Russian terrorists and is shot before Bauer can kill his attackers. But Nathanson was able to give Jack a microchip, possibly with information with the location of the nerve gas, before he dies.

Back at CTU, McGill goes ape over Bauer's escape and he finds Audrey's phone logs MIA which makes him decide to shadow Audrey's actions. Audrey pulls in Chloe to help with the technical aspects and Buchanan to run interference with McGill. Chloe is able to crack the microchip with Audrey's DOD encryption codes, but the price is McGill using his "hobbit-sense" and putting Buchanan in custody for insubordination. The chip contains information about a company based in the LA area and oddly, Jack knows someone that is on the Board of Directors. How Jack knows him and the connection he has to the terrorist attacks is still unknown.

Meanwhile, Erwich gets fired, or rather killed, by the head of the Russian terrorist group for his actions. The Boss never sanctioned the operation in the US and decides Erwich's failures, especially when not getting approval, should be rewarded with a bullet. With a new man in charge comes a new plan and in the case of The Boss, the new plan is to call President Logan and blackmail him into giving up the motorcade details for the Russian President so they can kill him. Failure to give over the information will result in American lives being lost. Logan cracks like, uh, something very fragile and/or weak and gives the details to the terrorists despite the objections from both Novick and his wife, the First Lady. In a nice plot twist, the First Lady decides to jump in the limo with the Russian President and his wife, I guess to force her husband to prevent the attack or kill his wife in the process.

The promo for next week’s episode has shown some quite exciting footage. The first being a McGill (god now I hate hobbits because of this guy) vs. Curtis standoff with Curtis threatening to pull his gun, on McGill if we're lucky. The second was some footage of the pending attack on the Russian motorcade; very reminiscent of a scene from Clear and Present Danger (you know the giant ambush scene involving rockets, cars, and lots of gunfire). We can only hope that a scene of equal standing will be shown in the next episode, but I bet they would have shown that footage if it existed.