Chapter 3: CHAPTER 3–HANGING COFFIN

In Langley Park town, Maryland, there is a region called Langley Park Oasis. Most of the usable land in Langley Park Oasis has been used for housing, so cemeteries are already running out of space.

The town government has ordered underground burial caves to be created. In the burial caves, bunk coffins are hung in ten-decker stacks.

Lisa Komtum went to work at her new job as Maintenance Manager for the Wilson Tower apartment building. As she sat alone sipping coffee at a table in the terrace at the side of the building, a 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO car slowly passed by on the road. Suddenly a Maserati MC20 car came out of an alley running perpendicular to the road, and the Maserati got on the road behind the Ferrari.

The Ferrari accelerated to high speed, swerving out of control along a winding section of the road and sliding down a slanting bank of a ditch at the roadside. 

As Lisa ran to the Ferrari to help the victim, four men wearing black stocking head covers, with their evil eyes glaring through the holes in the head covers, jumped out of the Maserati and clambered down the ditch. Lisa ducked behind a tree trunk, watching to see what the disguised men were going to do. 

The men came back up the bank of the ditch, carrying the victim, each man holding a hand or foot of the victim, his eyes narrowly open, his face turned toward the tree where Lisa was crouching. There was no blood visible on the victim’s body.

As the disguised men carrying the victim came close by the tree, his eyes flicked open wide, staring at Lisa and blinking three times. His eyes turned to fix gaze at each of the men, and then he stared at Lisa while mouthing: I’M KIDNAPPED. Then he moved his gaze towards the Oasis National Bank at the side of the apartment building, and said in a loud voice, “Bank CFO Chan Yoolong, are you carrying me to the underground cave where there’re hanging coffins, beneath the Wilson Tower apartment building?”

The man holding the victim’s left hand looked around and then said, “Yes, I’ll have you held in a hanging coffin until I get all the information about you.”

Lisa froze, looking around to decide in which direction she should run away from the kidnapers. But they resumed moving toward the Oasis National Bank located to the left of the apartment building.

In the apartment building, equipment and tools were kept in a room on the ground level, the room looking out to the isolate plot in the back of the building. The men carried the victim to that plot.

Lisa ran back inside the building, sneaked into the equipment room, and turned on the security camera, which allowed her to see and hear what was going on out on the ground surrounding the building.

The security camera monitor showed the captors carrying the victim down a hole in the ground, and then a door slid across the open hole to close it up. A man not belonged to the group of the disguised men came out of the bank and put camouflage foliage on the closed hole. Then he ran into the woods behind the bank.  

On the monitor, the bank CFO Chan Yoolong’s voice came out of the ground. “Security Officer Dan Long, I put you in a hanging coffin, and you stay here for a while. At any sign of the police coming for your rescue, you’ll be killed.”

Lisa remained siting at her desk, trying to figure out a way to get to the victim and get him out of the confinement coffin. Then she recalled what the bank CFO had said about having the victim killed if the police came for his rescue, she decided not to call the police.

After a while thinking hard and not having come up with any idea how she could help the victim, she got up to get out of the equipment room. As she turned the door knob, a voice came from the security camera. “Maintenance Manager Lisa Komtum, I’m the victim named Dan long being held in a hanging coffin in an underground cave beneath the Wilson Tower apartment building where you work. Can you hear me?”

Lisa ran back to the desk. “Yes, I can hear you. Who are you and how do you know the Wilson Tower apartment building so well?”

“My name is Dan Long,” The voice said.  “I was your English teacher at your school before.”

“Oh yes,” Lisa said, “now I remember you left the school to work somewhere else.”

The voice said, “I left the school to work as Maintenance Manager of the Wilson Tower apartment building where you’re now working. Then I left there to work at the Oasis National Bank as Security Manager. The bank CFO Chan Yoolong runs a money laundering ring and I’ve discovered his activity. He has me held in a hanging coffin, to extract information from me. I’ve discovered an underground tunnel connecting the bank vaults to this burial cave and to the equipment room in your apartment building. Please save me.”

“How can I get down to where you are held to save you?”

Mr. Long said, “You can slide aside the pot containing a fig tree in the equipment room, kick three times on the pot, and a square door that is part of the floor will slide open to reveal the tunnel entryway leading down to the cave with hanging coffins. I’m in one of the first ten-decker coffins as you come down into the burial cave.”

Lisa hesitated. “How do I know if you’re not the person you say you are? And that you’re not playing a cruel hoax on me to get me kidnaped?”

Mr. Long said, “Please don’t call the police because the captors will kill me before the police arrive. You should go down into the cave by yourself and I will tell you what to do to get me out of the coffin. But you must arrange for yourself to be able to communicate with someone by cell phone every five minutes during the time you are in the cave, and have the person call the police if you cannot be contacted after they’ve called three times in a row.”

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 “OK,” Lisa Said. “I must leave you for a bit to decide how to rescue you. But I’ll try to get you rescued as soon as I can.”

Lisa called her best friend Laura Manning on her cell phone. Laura answers in a cheerful voice, “What can I do for you, Lisa?”

“Laura,” Lisa said, “Do you remember Mr. Dan Long, our English teacher of two years ago?  I’m dealing with an urgent situation in which his life is in danger. He has just been kidnaped and held in a hanging coffin in an underground cave beneath the Wilson Tower apartment building where I work. I need your help in trying to get him rescued before the kidnapers come back, maybe to harm him. I know where he’s being held, and I can get to the location by myself. Starting at 9:00 a.m. today, you must call me about five minutes apart. If you've called three times in a row, and I still don’t answer, then call the police. You tell them to get into the equipment room in the apartment building, and tell them get down the tunnel through an opening in the floor at a corner of the room, and get down into the cave. I should be at the first ten-decker stack of hanging coffins, in one of which Mr. Long said he has been put.”

Through the floor opening, Lisa climbed down the steps and got into the tunnel. She walked in the dim light and came up to the first ten-decker stack of hanging coffins. A sliding ladder hanging from cables was positioned by the side of the decker. She stared up at the stack of coffins, wondering how she could tell which coffin containing Mr. Long. “Mr. Dan Long, are you in one of these coffins?”

Mr. Long said, “It sounds like you are right under the bottom coffin where I’m held. But don’t use any available ladders in this cave because they are connected to devices that are electrified.”

Lisa looked around, observing the burial cave. She climbed up the willow tree beside the stack of coffins, dim sunlight coming in from the cracks on the cave’s wall. She hung upside down by one hand, with her feet hooked on a branch, reaching her other hand toward an open strip gap along the length of the side of the bottom coffin, she poked at the gray cloth showing through the opening. The cloth moved!

Faint wheezing sound of breathing came out through the gap on the bottom coffin. Lisa’s mobile phone rang as it dropped to the floor.

Lisa looked toward her mobile phone lying on the floor, astonished. “I don’t see how I can get the coffin to open to get you out, because there’s a steel bar wrapped around the coffin.”

Mr. Long said. “There must be a button on the side of the coffin, on your side. But you must not press it with any bare part of your body, as the button is electrified.”

Lisa broke a twig from the tree and pressed the button with it, just as her phone on the floor rang for the second time.

 “Bang!” a shot ran out. Lisa thought: No, it’s not a gunshot, but it sounds like a gong banged by a hammer, coming from the direction of the apartment building.

The steel bar on the coffin became detached and the coffin’s wooden plank on the side facing Lisa flipped open, revealing Mr. Dan Long. 

 As Lisa was wondering how to help Mr. Long to get down to the ground from the coffin, footsteps rattled coming down the steps from the equipment room. She got down the tree and ran toward a recess in the wall to hide. The breath caught in her throat as she saw Laura’s dad leading a group of men coming down into the burial cave.

Lisa’s phone on the floor rang for the third time. She got out of hiding and stepped up to the men. “Hi Mr. Manning, I’m surprised to see you here. What are you and your men doing down here?”

Mr. Manning looked at Lisa, admiring her courage. “I’m director of the CIA, overseeing teams of intelligence analysts and agents. You go back up to the control room, uh…, equipment room, and wait in there.”

Lisa came back up to the equipment room. Three scientists in the makeshift Tech Area were working at a console board with buttons and switches that controlled electronic equipment recently set up in the room.  She sat fidgeting in the chair at her desk in the room, her eyes fixed on the security monitor screens. 

Suddenly the special units of the FBI's Critical Incident Response Group showed up in the room and went down into the burial cave.

 A red light on the console had been blinking. The red light stopped blinking. The green light turned on and went on blinking. The security monitors showed from different angles the rescuing agents carrying Mr. Dan Long to a camouflaged van. Then the van moved away into the woods.

Lisa’s phone rang and she tapped the Answer Call button, saying in an upset tone, “Laura, Why didn’t you make the first call at the time I told you to?”

“OK, calm down, Lisa,” Laura said in a conciliatory tone. “When I was about to make the first phone call to you, my dad called me and said he had the situation under control.”  

Lisa stepped out of the equipment room and went for a walk.

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