As soon as Renee entered the canvas in this season of 24 Jack pegged her as a ticking time bomb. But who knew less than a third of the day would be over when she detonated?

First we check in at the U.N., where President Taylor's appeal to the nations involved in the peace treaty has apparently been well-received. But the British delegate suspects there's something more going on, and she confides in him that nuclear rods are also in play.

 

Vlad's associate Lugo takes Jack to the hideout. He still thinks he's calling the shots, but Jack reminds him that the gun pointing at his head says otherwise. When they arrive Jack reads Vlad the riot act and demands to speak to Renee privately, where they again argue about pulling her from the operation. Lugo tells Vlad not to make a stupid decision for a whore and Vlad says watch it, she may be a whore but she's MY whore. Anyway, the plan to kill Jack/Ernst hasn't changed; they're just going to get that bigger payday first.

Everyone at CTU is working to back up Jack and Renee except for Dana, who's annoyed that her job is interfering with her efforts to shepherd Kevin and his partner through their heist. She finds a conveniently empty office and after one false move guides them to the right storage locker where they find the cash. There's a 15-minute window until the next security sweep, but the partner gets greedy and wants to shop around. Of course they don't make it out before the guard comes around, so Kevin's partner grabs a baseball bat and takes his best A-Rod-on-'roids swing.

Vlad is enjoying flaunting his intimacy with Renee in front of Jack, but he finally makes some half-hearted calls to his contacts. One of them is to Bazhaev, who has summoned the family priest for a late-night house call. He wants Oleg to receive a Christian burial but without the silly details like, say, preparing the body. When Bazhaev takes Vlad's call he's short with him, saying he's on a wild-goose chase. But immediately afterwards he calls one of the men transporting the rods to tell him they need to stop for the moment.

President Taylor finally gets to speak with Hassan and tells him she covered his behind with the other countries but this dissident round-up has to stop. He assures her it will, but not only does he refuse to believe his aide Tarin, who tell him they're satisfied the arrested delegate has no ties with the opposition, but he ups the ante by ordering the man's family to be arrested as well. Tarin pleads with Hassan to remember his principles, but Hassan would rather indulge his deepening paranoia so he decides Tarin is a threat as well. When the aide goes to seek help from Hassan's daughter, with whom he clearly has a personal relationship, he's quickly discovered and arrested as well.

All this talk of money and uranium is boring Vlad and he'd rather get busy with Renee. She tells him no nookie until they find a seller and her demands become increasingly manic. He indulges in his usual foreplay with a couple of solid blows to her face. In turn she makes good use of his bread-slicing lessons by carving him up with the bread knife. Renee is in such a trance that she stabs Jack in the torso when he rushes in to pull her off. After taking out the other Russians he briefs Hastings on the situation.

Renee's reaction is to slip even deeper into her pool of self-loathing. Jack tenderly tells her that she still has him and reminds her that they would be nowhere in the investigation without her help. When they hear sounds outside Jack thinks it's Cole coming to pick them up. Oops ... it's more Russians. Bazhaev was spooked by Vlad's call and sent his men out to get the 411. Jack decides to play it out and tells them Vlad double-crossed him but he's still out to make the deal. After all, CTU is monitoring, they can keep tabs on him. Except ... they take Jack to their waiting van through a drainage pipe so CTU's aerial surveillance never saw him leave. Ruh-roh.

In the previews for next week's 24 it appears that Bazhaev is more interested in learning where Jack got his intel, and the Russians don't pussyfoot around with any Full Biometrics Package. And could Dana possibly be putting an end to her storyline by coming clean with Cole? Yeah, I didn't think so either.