PERHAPS THERE WILL BE SITH RITE MASONS. At the beginning of this year's 24, I was almost right.

I'm guessing that New York's traffic is going to figure in one of the subsequent plot complications, particularly if the action moves off Manhattan.

Yup. Some rogue elements in the U.S. military fake a terrorist raid to obtain President Hassan (a moderate element from Somewherestan) to swap to the real terrorists in exchange for the terrorists' dirty bomb (do we call it hostages for arms?) Jack Bauer is trailing the car with the terrorists and the president along Riverside Drive.

That's where it gets weird. The mole in Inspector Lestrade's office CTU alerts the bad guys that they are being trailed just in time for the bad guys to make an evasive maneuver into a parking structure ... where another car is waiting for a latter-day version of the crossover fakement??

The car appears is the property of either a Russian whore or perhaps a biznesman. Whoever they are, they deliver the president to an apartment block, where live action somewhere switches to videotape, too bad for the president. The apartment block is guarded by heavily armed jihadi types on the roof ... and the local successors to the Jets and the Sharks never checked them out??

But one of the jihadis has a bluetooth on his ear, and the Russian ambassador turns up at an inopportune time, and President Nixon Logan returns from San Clemente. Perhaps the final few hours will reveal exactly what the real cabal of plotters is all about.