Five Came Back

A small disparate group of people are aboard a multi-day, multi-stop flight from Los Angeles to Panama City. Beyond the crew of pilot, Bill, a loner, his co-pilot Joe Brooks who is always looking for love, and Larry the flight steward, the passengers are: spoiled and rich Judson Ellis and his innocent fiancee Alice Melhorne, who are posing as a businessman and his secretary but who are really secretly running away to elope in Panama City because both sets of parents disapprove of the union; elderly Martha Spengler and her henpecked husband, botany Professor Henry Spengler; pre-schooler Tommy Mulvaney, the son of mobster Mike Mulvaney, and one of Mike's toughs, Pete, who is looking after Tommy for Mike, with Mike joining them in Panana City on a later flight in a couple of days; Peggy Nolan, who most of the other passengers believe to be a trollop as a young woman traveling alone, her history with men about which they are correct; and private detective Crimp who is transporting Vasquez to Panana City so that he can collect the $5,000 reward for the delivery of Vasquez, who committed a political murder and thus will be executed by hanging. On the second leg of the flight, the plane is thrown far off course in a tropical storm, and combined with mechanical difficulties, they are forced to crash land. They don't know exactly where they are but figure they are somewhere in the headwaters of the Amazon, where search crews would not be looking for them. Those that live through the crash have to band together for their survival, they needing to figure out if the natural order of their civilized lives applies in who will do what, most specifically who will make the important decisions. The plane may be repairable, but as time progresses and they learn of certain hazards in the area, they will have to make some difficult decisions in this matter, and in matters that may affect life or will affect certain death.