***SPOILERS*** Called by a local NY insurance company to bring back evidence if the reported lost at sea Carl Baines, David Lewis, is actually alive freelance photographer Mike Kovac travels to the coal mining country in rural Pennsylvania where Baines' wife Helen, Patricia Donahue, is reported to be living.
Helen who reported her husband to have fallen off a cruise ship and eaten by sharks is actually involved with him in a false $250,000.00 insurance scam with both her and Carl checking out of the country to Cuba after the money is collected. What Mr. Baines doesn't realize is that his old lady is planning to dump him by getting him killed by her boyfriend mining foreman George Werner, Baynes Barron, with both of them ending up with the cash! And nobody bothering to look for her husband since he's been reported , by Helen, to be both dead and lost at sea already!
There's only one thing that both Helen and George didn't expect. That young 12 year old James Houghton happened to be around when George worked over the surprised Carl Baines and dumped him in a 65 foot deep mine shaft! And on top of all that despite all that Baines went through he still managed to stay alive!
Mike Kovac, or Charles Bronson who plays him, using both his skills as a photographer as well as former miner, when he was a teenager, gets to the bottom of all this confusion by digging down deep and first photographing Baines, to prove that it's him and he's actually alive and in the mine shaft, with his 65 foot long remote cable attached to his camera as well as mining experience to finally drag Baines out of the predicament he found himself in.
****SPOILERS*** Helen who at first tried to sweet talk Kovac in not trying to rescue her husband, which didn't work at all, later hired a couple of goons to work him over in his hotel room. This only made Kovac not only more determined to find and save Carl Baines but bring her and her boyfriend George to justice! As for George in him being in charge of the rescue team in saving Baines from the mine shaft, that he in fact dropped Baines into, he ends up exposing himself and his motives in trying to cause the mine shaft to collapse, with Baines and Kovac stuck inside it, and thus put all his and Helen's problems behind them! Which in fact Mike Kovac by coming through in the clutch and saving Baines' life prevented George from doing!