After a run of bad luck, including being fired from a case investigating embezzlement, owing Rick money, and letting T.C.'s junior baseball team down, Magnum decides to get away from it all by going on a solo mountain climbing hike, without telling anyone where he is headed. But on the climb, already suffering from a centipede bite, he becomes trapped under the wreckage of an old World War II fighter plane he discovers. With his legs caught under the wreckage, and no one knowing where he is, Magnum is forced to review his mortality, his values, and the case from which he was fired.

Rick persuades Thomas to take a high-reward, supposedly simple missing person case, but the person paying for the case is actually New York City cop Michael Doheny, who has his own reasons for wanting to find the man in question. Doheny has come to Hawaii to track down those responsible for the rape and murder of his young granddaughter on the night of his retirement dinner, a hunt in which he asks Magnum's help.