The Honorable Knight Read online

  The Honorable

  Knight

  The Fellowship of the Ancient Covenant

  Patrick John Donahoe

  Mill Creek Publishing

  San Diego

  Mill Creek Publishing

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events are entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Patrick John Donahoe

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Published in the United States of America by Mill Creek Publishing, San Diego.

  Visit Mill Creek Publishing on the World Wide Web at

  www.millcreekpublishing.us

  Cataloging in Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

  LCCN: 2016907575

  ISBN-13: 9781944337049

  ISBN-10: 1944337040

  Cover art by BespokeBookCovers.com

  First Edition

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to my son Jason who encouraged me to take my writing seriously and cofounded our company, and to my readers Lissa Donahoe, Cherie Donahoe, O. Donn Grace, and Wayne Boren. Thanks to Michael Garrett who provided editorial comments, and to my creative writing instructor, Bob Arend, for his encouragement.

  Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  2013, Somewhere in Pakistan

  Ian’s night vision goggles revealed four terrorists in front of their mountain hideout. With the sun’s setting, Jahangir and his three soldiers completed their evening prayers. Jahangir and two of his soldiers entered the cave and left their youngest comrade to take first watch.

  Ian crawled up the mountain from sparse to sparser ground cover under the new moon, advancing precious inches each time the sentry looked away from his general direction. The hard dirt and rocks made crawling in his body armor difficult, but his Navy Seal training inured him to the gouging of his legs and arms. The ground reeked of ancient urine and shit from emptied chamber pots.

  His team called him Ghost because of his stealth ability to sneak up on an enemy. One odd scraping noise could prove fatal. Even in the cool evening breeze, sweat dripped off the end of Ian’s nose, smearing his desert-camo face paint. In daylight, he looked more like a maniac than the mountain’s stony ground and tufts of brush and grass.

  He pressed forward to the last cover between him and the sentry, a boulder that partially concealed his six-foot two-inch tall, 223-pound frame. He settled down behind the boulder, and inhaled and exhaled slow regular breaths to calm his nerves. He had to vault a twenty-foot gap and kill the sentry before the sentry could shout a warning to those within.

  The sentry showed no sign of recognition or alarm that Ian was within striking range. Ian noted the sentry’s repetitious actions, consisting of a five-second visual scan to the left, a five-second visual scan to the right, then a five-second scan down the mountain in Ian’s general direction, providing an exploitable vulnerability.

  The sentry’s vigilance waned with boredom. He pinned his Kalashnikov AK-47 between his arm and chest and extracted a Zippo lighter and a Turkish cigarette from his breast pocket. The sentry turned toward the cave to block the breeze from extinguishing the lighter’s flame, a fatal mistake.

  As soon as the sentry focused his attention on torching the end of his cigarette, Ian sprang from behind the boulder and seized him from behind. He cupped his left hand over the sentry’s mouth and plunged his Bowie knife between the sentry’s ribs up to the hand-carved ivory hilt.

  The point pierced the sentry’s heart. His back arched and he convulsed spasmodically, but Ian held him upright and muffled the sentry’s attempts to scream until the spasms stopped.

  Ian pulled the AK-47 from the sentry’s death grip and lowered him to the ground.

  Ian’s teammates, Senior Chiefs Colby and McLeod, scrambled up the hill to the left side of the cave entrance as Ian tossed a DM51 concussion grenade and a specially formulated gas grenade into the cave. With a deafening explosion, smoke and debris blew out of the cave.

  Ian slipped off his night vision goggles and all three pulled on their gas masks. They rushed into the cave, Ian first, to subdue their targets before they could recover and retaliate. Jahangir had to be taken alive, if possible.

  Colby and McLeod paused to flex-cuff the two unconscious Al Qaeda lying on the ground just inside the cave entrance. Ian ran ahead to Jahangir sprawled on the ground next to a folding table. Jahangir rose onto one elbow and pointed a pistol in Ian’s general direction, but Ian kicked the gun from his hand before Jahangir could fire a shot. Ian kicked Jahangir in the head, stunning the terrorist into compliance, then flex-cuffed the limp jihadi leader without resistance.

  Ian slipped off his gas mask, pulled three photographs from the sleeve pocket of his camo shirt, and compared them to Jahangir and his two fellow operatives. One of the men was a match to the photo of The Courier, Jahangir’s only communication with the outside world, following the precedent set by Osama bin Laden.

  Ian noted the condition of the cave. The light bulbs strung around the cave flickered, but provided adequate illumination. The Honda portable electric generator still functioned even though the smokestack lay on the ground and would eventually create a carbon monoxide problem. The table where Jahangir had been working was laden with a three-ring binder, two manual typewriters, and a radio receiver which was plugged into the electric generator.

  Unmade beds of straw mattresses and tattered blankets were strewn about the floor. The smoke-filled cave reeked of unwashed bedding, unbathed men, rotting food, and the acridity of exploded grenades. American-made rocket launchers, Russian-made Kalashnikov rifles and other weapons were lined up against the cave’s walls.

  Ian glanced over the papers scattered on the table. A letter handwritten in Farsi from the ‘Sword of Jihad’ caught his eye. He quickly skimmed the letter and read, ‘the truck will complete its journey in time for the storm.’

  Colby and McLeod conducted a sensitive site exploitation. With a silent nod to each other, Colby collected DNA swabs from each of the prisoner’s mouths with the threat of a rifle butt bash in the head if they did not comply, while McLeod photographed the inside of the cave, the weapons scat
tered around the cave walls, the operations table, and the prisoners.

  The pulsing roar of a Chinook helicopter’s blades echoed inside the cave.

  Seconds later, two Special Forces sergeants rushed into the cave.

  Ian shouted, “Sergeants James and Mason take charge of the prisoners.”

  “Yes, sir,” Master Sergeant James replied.

  The two sergeants led the still dazed Jahangir, his ears and nose still bleeding from the blast and Ian’s boot, The Courier, and the third terrorist out of the cave. They prodded them up the ramp of the hovering helicopter with their stun batons. The sergeants guarded the prisoners with pistols drawn even after they secured them to the helicopter jump seats and placed hoods over the prisoner’s heads.

  Ian stuffed the three-ring binder and loose papers into a mesh bag, and gathered the typewriters and the radio receiver into cardboard cartons he found stacked against the cave wall.

  Ian shouted, “Purge the cave.”

  Ian, Colby, and McLeod dragged the filthy mattresses and blankets to the center of the cave, piled the wooden table on the mattresses and then piled the weapons and miscellaneous items on top of the table.

  Chiefs Colby and McLeod loaded the mesh bag containing the binder and the boxes containing the typewriters and the radio receiver onto the helicopter. They reentered the cave, lit the mattress pile on fire, exited the cave with Ian, tossed two thermite grenades into the cave, and clambered aboard the helicopter.

  Ian threw the dead sentry over his shoulder, carried him aboard the helicopter, and hand signaled for the pilot to lift off and head back to the CIA Ops Center in Afghanistan. Once airborne, Ian sent a message to the Ops Center: ‘Team Omega; check Lima; check Juliet; check Charlie; Out.’ Meaning: ‘Operation Lucifer completed; Jahangir and The Courier captured alive.’

  Ian spotted a Predator drone pass high overhead as an Apache attack helicopter with its 30mm chain gun and Hellfire missiles arrived to escort them in case anyone was foolish enough to attack them from the ground or in the air. Ian then watched the pilot, Jacques LeFriant, conduct an air refueling operation with a KC-97E tanker once they were over Afghanistan’s air space.

  Capturing Jahangir was a Top Secret Op known only to a handful of people, run by Ian’s elite SF team and staffed by personnel who knew how to keep secrets, at least in the short term. No one was to reveal Ian’s team had infiltrated Pakistan illegally and captured the terrorist mastermind, even though every intelligence agency would find out over time. People eventually told secrets, it was human nature. People told stories and wrote books.

  Ian wondered what Jahangir had been planning. Jahangir’s conspiracy was going to use a ‘truck’ as a weapon of mass destruction. A ‘truck’ provided by an Al Qaeda friendly country. Risking his life to stop evil men had become such a common activity for Ian that Jahangir was merely another terrorist stopped from committing any more atrocities.

  Jahangir swore at them from beneath his hood from the time they were airborne until they arrived at the Forward Operating Base. His accomplices remained silent.

  Jacques LeFriant landed the helicopter on the compound’s helo pad.

  Ian hopped out of the helo with the mesh bag, and shouted, “Sergeants, take the prisoners to the maximum security cells, and the sentry to the morgue. Chiefs, take the typewriters and radio equipment to our office and secure them, then everyone meet in the interrogation room.”

  They each acknowledged with a nod.

  Ian carried the mesh bag and contents to the SOC entrance. After only seconds standing in front of the door, the door opened, and Serena greeted him.

  “I’m glad to see you made it back all in one piece,” Serena said and kissed him on the cheek. She relieved him of the mesh bag. “Where’s Jacques?”

  “He’s taking care of his aircraft. He’ll be along shortly.”

  Ian looked around the room at the assembled personnel. They represented all the three-letter super-secret US agencies, CIA, NSA, DIA, AEC, plus Serena, who represented the Mossad. The three-letter representatives would analyze and over-analyze all the information they could glean from Jahangir’s three-ring binder, loose papers and the typewriter ribbons. Ian knew this evil terrorist was so far off the scale that his capture and interrogation would not to be acknowledged to the world, nor bragged about by a President who wanted to highlight his determination to stop terrorism.

  Ian was pleased with the mission’s success. Of course, most of the missions Ian had taken on, since he, Jacques, Serena, and Desiree had covenanted to protect humanity, had been successful. The four of them had to keep their personal lives more secret than their professional ones.

  Ian often wondered what his life would have been like had he remained on his parents’ farm near Loch Léin, Eire, instead of embarking on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem when he turned fifteen those hundreds of years ago. As incredible as his life had been, no one would believe the humble beginnings that brought him to this day. If he hadn’t lived it, he wouldn’t believe it either.

  One

  1094 AD, near Loch Léin, Eire

  While Ian worked the farm, he dreamt of one day becoming a knight. His father, Sean O’Donoghue, and his Uncle Dylan, who was now his stepfather, had been heroic warriors, but not knights. His family was of humble origins, permitted to give their lives for their homeland, but not noble enough for knighthood.

  Old Dun, Ian’s docile farm horse, stood stock still while Ian easily hoisted the nine stone weight plow onto the cart and secured it with hemp rope. Ian then dropped a burlap sack of freshly picked cabbages into the cart next to the plow. He had spent the day plowing the unused fourth of their field in preparation for the next planting of oats and barley. Tomorrow he would add the rocks he had pulled out of the ground into the wall between his mother’s property and the McNamaras’ property. Good fences made good neighbors, and besides the never-ending harvest of rocks were put to good use.

  Ian felt the bone and joint pain from his current growth spurt, but he didn’t complain about his growing pains, nor the daily drudgery of working the hard scrabble farm. Dylan, his stepfather, had said, “You’re already stronger and taller than your father was, and he was taller than I. How much taller you’ll become, I can’t guess.”

  Ian led Old Dun down the well-trodden footpath to his mother’s stone walled and thatched roof cottage in the glen. He passed the McNamaras’ cottage, but saw no one outside working. The McNamaras’ she goat made the mistake of wandering into Old Dun’s path and was knocked aside bleating as Old Dun trudged along.

  Ian pondered an approach to convince his uncle and mother to allow him to embark on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land after next spring’s planting. He had to find the right moment, probably during supper, and the best words to convince them. He would be fifteen next May. Ian’s father and uncle had both been warriors in their younger years. Dylan had traveled beyond the Emerald Island before he was sixteen. How could his uncle and mother deny him the right to pursue his own adventure?

  He looked up from the stony path to see his mother, Sharon, taking down freshly-washed clothes from a line stretched between the cottage and an oak tree in the yard. The dark clouds overhead and the earthy whiff of the cool breeze indicated an imminent rainstorm. “Halloo, Mother,” Ian called out.

  Sharon gathered her basket of clothes and called out, “You’ll be pleased to hear your Uncle Dylan has prepared two plump chickens for our stew.” Just before she entered the cottage she added, “Did you bring fresh cabbages?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Good, give the cabbages to me and tend to Old Dun and the mare . . . then wash up for dinner.”

  Ian handed the sack of cabbages to his mother without comment, although he was slightly annoyed at being told what to do. He had been doing a man’s work too long to be treated like a child.

  He unhitched Old Dun from the cart and secured the cart at the side of the barn while Old Dun sauntered into his stall. Ian spread fresh straw in the s
tall and filled Old Dun’s food trough with hay. He hand fed Old Dun a generous ration of oats and filled the water trough with a bucket of fresh stream water. Old Dun was only about three years old, but his baleful eyes and agreeable demeanor made him seem older; hence, he had been dubbed Old Dun while still a colt as a term of affection.

  Ian patted the faithful workhorse on the flank and checked on the mare in the adjacent stall. Dylan had already scattered fresh straw in the mare’s stall and fed her, but she still nuzzled Ian’s palm when he offered a handful of oats. She was over ten months along and would soon drop her foal. The hope was the foal would be a colt that could work the fields alongside his sire, Old Dun.

  Ian strolled from the barn to the cottage, stopping along the way to wash the soil off his hands in the main horse trough. Ian’s mother kept a clean, organized home, unlike some of the neighbors. Ian waited until his Uncle Dylan sat to table, then took his own place. His mother had placed her three wooden bowls and cups on the hand-hewn table with a pewter spoon and sharp knife at each setting.

  Sharon set her place with the chipped mug and the chipped bowl in deference to her men. “I made your favorite berry pie for dessert,” Sharon announced with a smile.

  The delicious aroma of chicken stew with cabbage, carrots, onion, parsley, and wild garlic filled the cottage. Ian’s mouth immediately began to water in anticipation.

  A thunderous Irish rain began pelting the cottage. Sharon placed a large pot in the corner of the cottage just as a small drip of rain began leaking through the thatched roof. She returned to the table and sat between her two men. “When are you two lads gonna climb onto the roof and patch that thin spot, or better yet, replace the whole roof?”

  Ian looked at Dylan, who replied, “I’ll have Ian up there tomorrow. We’ll get it done.”

  “I’m counting on you. Let’s eat.”

  They held hands and bowed their heads. Dylan pronounced the blessing on the food, “Bless us, Oh Lord, and these thy gifts we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord. Amen.” He raised his head and nodded at Sharon, who proceeded to serve up the stew to the men.