Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
Eighteen months after Day 3, Jack Bauer is working for Secretary of Defense James Heller and secretly dating Heller’s daughter, Audrey Raines. A commuter train bombing draws Jack back to CTU, where the investigation reveals that terrorists have kidnapped Heller and Audrey. Jack helps rescue them, but the broadcast of their threatened execution gives Habib Marwan’s network the opening it needs to seize control of a nuclear plant override system. Marwan’s attacks then move from reactor sabotage to a stolen stealth fighter that brings down Air Force One.
With President Keeler incapacitated, Vice President Charles Logan takes charge and turns to former President David Palmer for help. Marwan’s operatives steal the nuclear football from the crash site and prepare to launch a missile at Los Angeles. Jack traces the plot through defense contractor McLennan-Forrester and a Chinese national hiding at the Chinese consulate. In the raid to capture him, Chinese guards accidentally kill their consul, while Paul Raines, Audrey’s former husband, dies in surgery after Jack gives priority to keeping the suspect alive. Audrey’s relationship with Jack breaks under the cost of his choices.
Marwan falls to his death while trying to escape Jack, leaving CTU without his information about the missile. A damaged navigation device from his helicopter gives the team its flight path, and an Air Force fighter destroys the missile before it reaches Los Angeles. The consulate raid leaves Jack exposed to Chinese retaliation, and officials consider killing him to prevent sensitive information reaching China. Palmer warns Jack of the danger. With help from Tony Almeida, Michelle Dessler and Chloe O’Brian, Jack stages his death inside CTU, then slips away under a new identity as Palmer accepts that Bauer must remain officially dead.