GOLDEN — After Gary Faulkner attracted international media attention to his cause, you’d think it would be impossible for him to sneak up on the world’s most wanted terrorist.

But Faulkner, 51, has a plan to kill, or at least nab, Osama bin Laden — and he’s ready to carry it out as soon as he can. “It’s much easier for a mouse to get into a castle than it is for a lion,” said an upbeat Faulkner from a friend’s home in Golden on Tuesday.

Faulkner, who gets three kidney dialysis treatments a week, says he’s healthy enough to return to Pakistan and complete his mission to capture bin Laden. But he’s looking for help in carrying out his unique plan.

Instead of using a visa to enter Pakistan the conventional way, he wants to use a balloon or glider to fly into the mountainous wilderness where bin Laden is reportedly hiding.

“They are looking for me to come in low, but I’m coming in from above,” he said. “I’ll talk to anyone that has some sort of experimental craft. The job is not done. And I’m not going in as an American. I’m going in as a thief.”

Faulkner said he has made eight trips to get bin Laden. The last trek ended in June, when he was whisked out of the country just ahead of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Officials in Pakistan said he was captured in the northern region with a pistol, a sword and night-vision equipment.

But Faulkner said he was never arrested and he got help from local police who believed al-Qaeda was going to kill him.

“I have nothing but good things to say about the Pakistan people and authorities,” Faulkner said. “They opened their homes and hearts to me.”

Faulkner, who had worked construction in Greeley, sold his equipment to finance his last trip to Pakistan.

Despite his notoriety, Faulkner said he has not made money from his fame because that was never his motivation.

“For me, the only thing on my mind is finishing the job,” he said.

Faulkner, who now stays with friends in Greeley, Golden and elsewhere, gets dialysis treatments in different clinics in order to avoid attention. Jobless, he lives on about $485 per month in welfare benefits.

But he said he’s stronger than before, thanks to exercise and a diet high in protein. Faulkner said he is also buoyed by the outpouring of support for his cause.

He said he has a Facebook page that he hopes will bring in the donations and help he needs to “take my final test.”

It’s not surprising that Faulkner got such attention from the public and the media because his story has all the qualities of a modern morality tale, said University of Colorado journalism professor Janice Peck.

“It’s a very simple story, David vs. Goliath, good vs. evil,” she said. “All the anxiety and fear we are feeling is displaced on this guy who will solve our problems in the most simple way: Kill this bad guy.”

Faulkner, however, insists he’s no flash-in-the-pan celebrity like Richard Heene, who perpetrated the “Balloon Boy” hoax in Fort Collins last year.

“Whoopi Goldberg said to me when I was on ‘The View,’ ‘Hey, you are serious, you’re the real deal,’ ” Faulkner said. “I told her, ‘Of course I am. I’m no Balloon Boy.”

Monte Whaley: 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com