The Fourth Horseman

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The facts are that Pakistan does have an arsenal of more than one hundred nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them throughout the Indian subcontinent.

Pakistan is an unstable government. For years its secret military intelligence service, the ISI, has been funding Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, including the Taliban, to harass Indian military forces on its border with Kashmir. But now those terrorist organizations have turned on their former master.

The United States has the means to swoop into Pakistan, find the nuclear weapons and disable them if the government were to fall into rebel control. The operation wouldn’t play out so neatly as the raid to eliminate Osama bin Laden did — almost certainly, American lives would be lost.

The problem is, according to U.S. military sources, we could guarantee finding only around ninety of the weapons, which would leave at least ten, and possibly more, nukes. A formidable arsenal.

I have not divulged the locations of our strike forces nor the exact methods they would use to neutralize the weapons. Suffice it to say, for the sake of the story, the scenario is current and real. All it would take is one spark. One man.