Arthur Rabens

Arthur Rabens was one of the eleven Cordilla virus couriers working for Stephen Saunders during Day 3. According to Saunders, this name may have been an alias. Rabens was the final courier of the virus during Day 3, as he was the only one whom Saunders could not help locate after he was forced to surrender.

Before Day 3

Rabens and ten other individuals were chosen by the millionaire bio-terrorist Stephen Saunders and his assistant Osterlind to be Cordilla virus couriers. They were selected because they were "true believers" in the idea that that the greatest threat to world peace came from the United States. (A twelfth courier, Marcus Alvers, worked for Saunders solely for the profit.) Their ultimate goal was to use the threat of infecting large swathes of the American population to force President David Palmer to dismantle America's foreign intelligence apparatus.

Day 3

Once Saunders loaded the Cordilla virus vials into the dispersal devices, the eleven couriers departed for major cities, with Rabens remaining to target Los Angeles. Saunders did not assign his couriers specific targets inside the cities, so Rabens chose the Los Angeles Subway as his strike point. When CTU threatened to expose Jane Saunders, Saunders' daughter, to the virus by placing her inside the Chandler Plaza Hotel, Saunders was forced to dismantle his plot, and surrendered the GPS tracking codes for the couriers.

CTU located him in the subway using Rabens' GPS tracker, and halted his train. This tipped him off, however. (CTU personnel also strongly believed that Rabens had been specifically warned by a phone call from the Denver courier, who knew the government was tracking him and who was shot in the middle of his call.) Arthur was able to evade immediate detection by agents Jack Bauer and Chase Edmunds by planting his GPS device on an innocent civilian, framing him temporarily as the courier.

After realizing that the real courier had planted the GPS chip, CTU ordered the subway be locked down and began sending photos of every white male to Saunders so Rabens could be identified. Moments before Saunders could identify Rabens, Saunders was unexpectedly shot by Theresa Ortega, the distraught widow of one of his victims. Rabens then covertly slipped away from the supervising LAPD officer, and escaped the subway perimeter by using a switchblade to kill two other officers.

Rabens then stole a car after murdering a motorist named Frank Cassar. When CTU field agents pursued him, Rabens drove up to a middle school and attempted to either hide or infect the students there. Chase discovered him in a chemistry lab, but Rabens bested him in close quarters combat. To ensure Rabens could not flee with the virus again, Chase attached the titanium clamp of the virus-dispersal device to his wrist. Enraged, Rabens activated the device and moved to kill Chase, but was gunned down by Jack. Jack severed Chase's hand with a fire axe, and then rushed the virus device over to a refrigerator, where it was contained. The securing of Arthur Rabens' vial ended the Cordilla virus threat of Day 3.

Background information and notes

Rabens contacts a chopper extraction team

• In several of the deleted scenes from Rabens' episode, the season finale, a deleted plot arc can be seen. In this arc, Saunders warns Jack that if Rabens is not stopped, he won't settle for "half measures" by dispersing the virus; since Rabens knows he has the last vial, he will flee the country and have the virus duplicated many times over for the purpose of restarting the whole operation. In the extended Chase/Rabens fight deleted scene, the terrorist's helicopter extraction team hovers nearby the building and calls him.

• Rabens has virtually no lines, his only statements being brief exclamations as he fought Chase and realized the device was clamped onto his wrist.