My name is Jack LaDrew.

Ever since I was a kid, the thought of getting a normal job seemed like the strangest, most

distasteful thing in the world.

So from the time I was 16, I went the other way, traveling around the country, hiking, climbing,

paying my way through temp gigs and the outdoors, then teaching all those skills to other people.

Finally, I began to get around the world, anyway I could.

I fought oil fires, I got on the crew of a disastrous expedition to bring up a sunken

ship from the bottom of the Mediterranean.

I even tried to join the French foreign Legion.

By the time I was 30, I felt like a full-time adventurer.

Sure, I made ends meet in some pretty mundane ways when I had to, but it always felt like

my life was being lived in the times when I was in a quest somewhere.

And there have been a lot of those, always biting my time until the next reckless journey.

That was me.

At some point, like a lot of people with my same curiosity about remote places and strange

experiences, I came across the story of the Tejikastan Air Crash.

On October 17, 1992, a plane headed for the capital city of Dishonbe had been hijacked

by a Pamiri gunman demanding a prisoner release in Gornobotic Shun, and the plane quickly

went down in the Pamir mountains.

29 people onboard, two pilots to crew 25 passengers, 14 of them relief workers.

It took nine days just for the plane to be spotted out there in territory of that remote.

The scandal came when no one wanted to attempt a rescue.

...