In Islamabad, Pakistan, low-level State Department bureaucrat Alex Talbot asks his driver Rafiq to take him to a bazaar to score some weed. Encountering a mass protest that turns violent, they flee their car and take refuge in the house Rafiq shares with his parents and sister. In Washington, D.C., Secretary of State Walter Larson is fetched from a hotel tryst by his seen-it-all aide, Kendra Peterson, to attend an emergency White House meeting on the growing unrest in Pakistan. After learning that paranoid General Umair Zaman is threatening the region with destruction, President Navarro and ultra-hawkish Secretary of Defense Grey put a plan in motion to remove Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, against Larson's advice that such an operation is risky and reckless.