Col. Joseph Pike was planning for his early retirement from the Army Corps of Engineers. He had the bungalow in the Caribbean picked out, and all that was left was to put in his notice, make the down payment, and pack his bags. Then he was called in for one last assignment.

An Army encampment from the late 1960's, a city built under the ice of a glacier in Greenland, was originally designed to be a one-year experiment, using volunteers to inhabit the facility to see if life under the ice was possible. Thirty years later, a man is found frozen to death on the top of the glacier, and the Army decides to go looking for their facility. Col. Pike is sent to search for Camp Century, the city under the ice, and finds more than even the Army expected.