March 1943, at the height of World War II, a newly commissioned B-17 bomber is nearing the west coast of Greenland. Flown by a carefully picked crew, it is carrying a piece of vital secret cargo that under no circumstances can be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy. Caught by an unexpected and fearfully violent Arctic storm, the pilot is forced to crash-land on the vast, awesome Greenland Ice Cap. The crew is saved, but the plane itself and the ultrasensitive cargo it is carrying are swallowed by another great storm and disappear. Three decades later Lieutenant Scott Ferguson, the pilot of a ski-equipped Air Force C-130, discovers an unknown B-17 rigidly frozen on an all-but-unexplored section of the ice cap.