Astral Encounters · Book I
A bomb on an airport transfer bus in Los Angeles. A British father with a fragment of metal in his forehead. And an FBI agent with something to prove.
This is Special Agent Imad Dahn’s case file, as it stood on the night he began to believe something impossible. Read it in order.
Some black bars you are cleared to lift: press them. The rest are withheld.
Contents
At approximately hrs an explosive device was detonated aboard a passenger transfer bus running between the rental car depot and the airport terminals. The device was carried by a lone male, early twenties, who boarded at the depot. He was killed in the blast. Identified as .
Thirteen people were killed and thirteen injured. The vehicle's roof was torn off and thrown clear. LAX was closed to traffic for the remainder of the day.
Among the injured: LEWIS, Mark (34), British national, accountant, of Cheshire, England. Severe head trauma from a metal fragment. LEWIS, Clare (13), his daughter. Minor injuries. The family had returned their rental car at the end of a two-week vacation (San Diego, the coast, San Francisco) and were at the rear of the bus, furthest from the device. LEWIS, Jill, his wife, was killed.
Survivors were taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Mark Lewis was unconscious on arrival and remained so for approximately thirty hours.
Assessment: an attack of this kind requires support. A source of explosives, a bomb maker, a local co-ordinator.
RESTRICTEDQ. You told your father you'd seen the man before.
A. Yes.
Q. Where?
A. First when we arrived on holiday. I saw him with the other man at the car hire place, when we went to get the car. I saw him get on the transfer bus.
Q. The other man. Was he with him?
A. Yes. They were together.
Q. And after that?
A. Then I saw him again. When he blew up the bomb.
Q. Would you know the other man again?
A.
Agent’s note. Witness places the bomber at the rental depot with a second male on the family's arrival date, two weeks before the attack. Possible dry run. Pull CCTV for the depot and approach roads for that date. Witness to view stills as soon as they are ready. Treat as priority.
LEWIS, MScroll over the scan, drag it, or use the slider to move up through the head.
Finding. CT head, axial, non-contrast. LEWIS, Mark, 34. Metallic foreign body lodged in the frontal bone at the midline of the forehead, between the eyebrows, against the inner surface of the skull. Streak artefact from the metal. No penetration of the brain.
“You were very lucky. A few more millimetres and it would have penetrated your brain.”: the doctor, to Mark Lewis
A male attempted to detonate a device on the ward where the survivors of the LAX bombing were being treated. The device was concealed in his shoes. One shoe came off before detonation and was recovered intact; it has gone to the lab. The second exploded.
Killed: Dr Mohammed Bashir, British national, himself a survivor of the LAX bombing. From the position of his body he placed himself over the device. LAPD Officer Joe Bellini, killed before the explosion.
Injured: LAPD Officer George Williams (in surgery, expected to recover). Nurse Kirstie Ackermann, minor cuts to the arms. She was shielding Clare Lewis at the time.
The attacker survived, critically injured. Identified as . Under guard.
Assessment: Clare Lewis was the target. Her status as a witness was reported in the media before she had been shown the CCTV stills. All survivors moved to a different wing. Press told they have been transferred to other hospitals.
RESTRICTEDM. Lewis. Woke after the attack, new wing.
“I know about the attack. I saw it all.”
Knew the nurse protected Clare. Nobody had told him.
“Thank God that Muslim doctor got the shoe off.”
Not released. Not on the news.
“Thank God he answered my calls.” The officer?
Said he was confused. He wasn't.
Hospital staff: unconscious the whole time.
Check. Ask Jackson.
He is holding something back.
I.D.As requested. Medical staff and the ward records agree: Lewis was unconscious throughout the attack. In his bed, in his room. He did not leave it.
Separately: the raid on the address identified from the CCTV stills found the suspect gone. No computer, no phone, no paperwork.
Not sure what you're looking for with Lewis. Happy to talk it through at HQ.
| Address | Home of ACKERMANN, Kirstie (nurse, Cedars-Sinai). |
|---|---|
| Reason | Information received that an elderly neighbour, Mrs MAHON, who was feeding the occupant's cat, may have fallen in the kitchen. |
| Source | LEWIS, Mark, a patient at Cedars-Sinai. Has never visited the address. |
| Kitchen as described by source (confirmed by occupant) | Oak units. White tiles with a yellow and blue hay-bundle motif. Blue-grey worktops, pale yellow blinds. Two white bar stools. A Mickey Mouse cookie jar. A framed Marilyn Monroe print. A 1950s-style radio. |
| Result | Officer attended. Mrs Mahon found on the kitchen floor with a deep cut to the forehead, breathing. Ambulance called. |
Exactly as described.
The third eye is one of the seven primary chakras and is located between your eyebrows, slightly raised, in the middle of the forehead.
Developing the third eye gives better visualisation, increased psychic perception and, when fully developed, the ability to achieve astral projection: to leave your body.
An injury to the head can activate the third eye, sometimes called the pineal gland.
V. Prasad (visitor, father of Clare's friend), pointing at Lewis's bandage:
“The Third Eye has been opened.”
Williams says he heard a voice warn him in the elevator. Before the attack.
Tried it. Closed my eyes, pictured an apple. It is there. Between the eyebrows.
These pages are real. From the 1970s the CIA and US Army intelligence funded research into “remote viewing”: trained viewers trying to describe places they could not see. The programme ran under several codenames, Grill Flame among them, and ended as Stargate. It was closed in 1995 and its files were later declassified.
In 1979 and 1980 the viewers were tasked with the American hostages held in Tehran. These are pages from one of those sessions, and the cover of the programme's 1985 training manual, with its own redaction still in place.
Astral Encounters
The file stops here, at Chapter Eleven of From Your Tethered Body. What Dahn does next, and what it costs Mark, is in the book.
A work of fiction: this case file is an invention for the novel, not a real government document. The CT scan is a real, anonymised scan of a healthy head from the Department of Radiology, Uppsala University Hospital (CC0), with the fragment added. The archive pages are real declassified US government documents (public domain), via the Internet Archive.
