But recently a vicious, wanted war criminal who’d eluded them for years surfaced with plans for terrible carnage. The Volunteers were forced out of retirement. They managed to apprehend the killer—though only after Middleton’s ex-wife was murdered and his daughter was nearly killed by her own husband, who turned out to be connected with the criminal.

Realizing that he could no longer remain in academia while such evil continued to thrive, Middleton decided to start up the Volunteers once again. The group included three of the original members: himself, Leonora Tesla and Jean-Marc Lespasse. New to the group were Connie Carson and Jimmy Chang, who now was back at headquarters outside of Washington, D.C. The slightly built Taiwanese-American had a miraculous grasp of languages, advanced degrees in computers and science and a love of research—Lespasse called him “Wiki” Chang after the on-line encyclopedia. Middleton’s daughter also helped them out.

Glancing now at Balan, who struggled to sit up straight after the Taser jolt, Middleton sure hoped the interrogation was successful. They desperately wanted to capture the man’s boss. Devras Sikari was a curious character. Born into a poor family in Kashmir, the disputed territory in the north of India, Sikari had somehow managed the impossible: He’d attended an elite school in England. A brilliant student, his mind sharper than many of his professors, he’d studied engineering and computer science.

There were rumors that he was being bankrolled for his entire education and living expenses, but no one knew who it might be; the source of his underwriting was anonymous. As soon as he left university, he’d shunned dozens of offers from large British firms and returned home to India, where somehow—no one quite knew how—he amassed some significant start-up capital. He began setting up engineering and computer companies and making millions in India’s burgeoning high-tech world.

Then, having made his fortune, he disappeared from Mumbai and New Delhi, where his companies were based. “Not long after that he surfaced in Kashmir,” Jimmy Chang had explained, “and became a combination warlord, insurgent and cult figure.”

Chang had briefed Middleton and the other Volunteers about the Kashmir conflict. Formerly known as a “princely state,” Kashmir has been the object of a deadly game of tug-of-war for more than half a century. India and Pakistan each control separate portions of the region, while China exercises authority over a smaller section of the northeast. But the partition is merely tolerated; both India and Pakistan claim that the entire state is theirs and have fought frequently to assert ownership. The massive, fertile area has been the basis for perhaps the closest nuclear confrontation between nations since the Cuban missile crisis in the 1960s.