Hammond Innes · 1993 · survival

Hammond Innes's 1993 sequel to Isvik. A pilot thrown out of the RAF for insubordination is hired by the entrepreneur Iain Ward to lift a Hercules off a broken runway on the Antarctic ice shelf. The contract is absurd, the money is real, and the reason anyone wants an aircraft down there at all is not disclosed until the last few pages.

1. 1
   Bangkok

   Ed Cartwright is flying charter work in South East Asia, out of the RAF and out of favour, when Iain Ward's offer reaches him - along with a Thai woman with a Khmer Rouge problem and a strong interest in leaving the region.

2. 2
   Punta Arenas

   The staging point is the Magellan Strait, where the southern expeditions are outfitted and where the flying weather south is discussed by people who have lost friends to it - and where the contract stops sounding merely eccentric.

3. 3
   The ice shelf

   On the ice shelf a Hercules sits on a runway that has broken up beneath it, and the job is to get it into the air again - and the real object of the expedition turns out to be diamonds lying in shallow water under the ice.