The sun was low to the sky as Senior Airman Anderson Cobbler and Airman Pedro Mendoza looked out over the deep blue waters of the Pacific, casting an ominous orange glow over the seas. The sun’s reflection in the water was bright and linear, like a spear piercing the eyes. The American airmen knew there was trouble ahead.

“So there’s a new land mass,” Pedro stated simply. “What do you think it means, Andy?”

“I guess there is,” Anderson replied. “I don’t know what it means. And I won’t break my brain trying to figure it out, either.”

“Sounds smart,” Pedro said.

The two men watched silently over the waves toward where they knew there was nothing they knew. They had been called on to act as a potential rescue team, callsign Prancer Two, in case a recon flight over the new land was shot down or experienced technical difficulties and the pilot had to eject. They were trained for every scenario; every scenario except potentially invading an unknown, unallied, unheard of nation. If it was one.

Anderson and Pedro were well experienced, with seven and four years in Combat Rescue respectively. They were both young men, in excellent shape, though maybe not as large as some other guys from other special operations units. Their PJ training had made them quick-witted, adaptable, and capable of overcoming anything in their way so that others may live.

They were told that recon flights were going to be a regular thing with this new situation, and they were constantly ready. Sort of. There were two teams of two PJs each, one for morning rescues, and one for afternoon. Midnight to noon, noon to midnight. Similar to how it often went in Afghanistan out of Bagram.

“Prancer Two!” a voice shouted over a speaker. “Prancer Two, to the bridge immediately!” The men looked at each other and nodded.

“Show time,” Anderson said.

The pair quickly ran to the bridge, now eager and hyped up for a rescue. Whatever the situation, wherever it is, it’s always exciting to get called on a rescue. They had to run into the ship down narrow halls, barely evading the sailors working on the ship, and climbed several flights of stairs to get to the bridge.

When they arrived at the bridge, the men saluted their current commander, the captain of the ship, and stood at attention.

“When the Admiral said he wanted a couple of you guys here, I wasn’t about to argue,” the ship’s Captain said. “And it looks like it was a good decision. We’ll be needing your talents here.”

“What happened, sir?” Pedro asked.

“We appear to have encountered a strange situation,” the Captain said. “The pilot of an F-15 Eagle was flying a mission over the new landmass. According to satellite imagery, there was some kind of bug-horse combination that was flying faster than it should have been.”

“A bug-horse?” Anderson repeated.

“That’s what it looked like. The F-15 pilot was already low on fuel, if the timing of the crash was any indication, and from the images, it looks like the bug got sucked into his air intake.”

“Oh, man,” Anderson said.

“Yeah. The plane went down.” The Captain turned to a table to his left, which had a map on it. “We know the plane went down here.” He pointed at a spot in the coastal waters of the land. “But we know that our pilot didn’t stay inside it. He had an emergency beacon active, but when he hit the land, the signal became weak and spotty.”

“But he’s alive and in the forest,” Pedro said.

“Probably, if his training worked. And I’m sure it did,” the Captain said. “Even if he wasn’t, you two would still be going in there anyway.”

“So do we have any idea what the situation is like on the ground?” Anderson asked.

The Captain shook his head. “Not really. Normally, we would send in SEALs and SWCCs to do strategic reconnaissance, but you two need to do this rescue now. So it looks like you’ll be our first real boots on the ground here.”

“Man, these things we do,” Pedro said.

“When did he go down?” Anderson asked.

“I wouldn’t have called you now if he went down hours ago,” the Captain said. “He’s moving through some forest right now. You two need to get out there and find him.”

The airmen stood at attention and saluted. “Yes, sir!” After that, they left the bridge and made their way to the helicopter pad.

All their rescue gear was at the helicopter pad, and they brought everything that they might need: medical kits, machetes for cutting through brush, their helmets and visors with HUDs and special optics, their weapon loadouts, small sets of climbing gear, smoke grenades for marking locations, and important navigational equipment and a locator to find the Eagle pilot’s beacon. They also brought their utility combat knives, good for fighting or rescuing.

When they were all set and ready to go, the helicopter took off from the pad and flew away from the ship. The men looked back at the familiar, shrinking mass of metal, and watched it until it was no longer in sight in the darkness as night fell over the seas.

The ride in the HH-60 Pavehawk, Padre One, which had also been assigned to the ship, was going to be short, so the men had to take the time to make sure everything was just right. The helicopter would drop them off as close to the beacon as possible, hover high enough to avoid potential rocket fire or small arms fire, and leave when either the men came back with the downed pilot or fuel ran low and it needed to go back to the ship.

Sitting in their seats, the men were checking every last clip and strap on them. They each had their M4 and P226 firmly attached to them, though they weren’t totally sure about actually using them. There were a lot of variables here, and these small items had the potential to make or break the United States’ position here.

The speakers in the helicopter cracked to life. “Thirty Seconds!”

Anderson and Pedro checked their weapons for safety, made sure their medical gear was secured, and sat tight. Thirty seconds meant they had just been approaching land, and were probably over it by now. The pilot must have seen a decent-sized clearing where he could let the men fast-rope down.

Soon, right at the thirty second mark, the helicopter tilted back and then back forward into a steady hover some distance over the treeline. He came over the speaker and told the men to go. Anderson and Pedro opened the doors of the helicopter, hooked onto the ropes, and slid their way down.

As they went down, they looked around. The forest they were in was incredibly thick, and the presence of this opening was a bit odd. There were others like it as well, all about the same size and scattered randomly throughout the area. The men gave it little thought as they went down to the ground. On the ground, the men disconnected from the ropes and moved away, toward the treeline.

“Padre one, this is Prancer two-one, how copy, over?” Anderson said.

“Prancer two-one, this is Padre one, I read you. Do you have eyes on our Eagle?” Padre One asked.

Anderson and Pedro looked around. “Negative, Padre One, no Eagles in sight. We will begin our search and hit you up when we get new details.”

“Copy, Padre One is on standby,” Padre One said.

Anderson looked out into the forest. “Welcome to the jungle,” he sang quietly.

“Not much in the way of fun and games,” Pedro said. “How’s Eagle’s beacon holding up?”

Anderson checked the beacon locator. “Ah, I got nothing,” he said. Just then, it blinked into life. “Wait, wait, I got something.” Anderson pointed the beacon locator toward where it said Eagle was. “He’s... far.”

“How far?” Pedro asked.

“Far,” Anderson replied. “several kilometers in that direction.” He pointed out into the forest.

“The helo can’t wait that long,” Pedro said.

“Yeah,” Anderson said. He clicked his radio to talk to Pedro One. “Padre One, this is Prancer two-one.”

“Go ahead, Prancer,” Padre One replied.

“Eagle is several clicks out, too far for you guys to wait. Recommend you wait back on the ship while we go and search.”

“Copy that, Prancer two-one, we’re buggin’ out. Good hunting,” Padre One said as it turned and left.

“So I guess we’re alone out here,” Pedro said.

“Looks that way,” Anderson replied. “Let’s move. The sooner we have Eagle and we’re out of here, the better.”

“I copy that,” Pedro said.

The pair started quietly walking through the forest in the direction of the beacon, keeping their steps a slight as possible and their weapons’ laser sights off. In the darkness, they were forced to turn on their Nightvision to navigate the forest. Without them, they surely would have hit trees and made all kinds of compromising noise.

They walked a long distance through the forest. The moonlight, as it was now well into the night, failed to penetrate the dense canopy of the forest, and it was near total darkness. Anderson and Pedro kept their eyes open for movement in the green of their Nightvision and their ears open for anything other than themselves.

Anderson, in front, stopped.

“You hear that?” Pedro asked from behind.

“Yeah,” Anderson whispered back.

In the distance, they could hear a cluster of noise coming from a single location. It almost sounded like voices, but the way they were garbling each other, it was hard to tell from a distance. The men exchanged a glance, noded, and started moving toward the source of the sounds.

It took a few minutes with their further slowed movement, but they reached the source of the noise. What they saw would have struck them silent if they had been talking. Like the Captain said, there were several bug-horses in front of them, around a fire, talking in a language that the men didn’t recognize. Some had jagged horns on their heads, while others had bug wings on their backs. They all had razor sharp teeth, though, and neither man was in any mood to lose an arm to these things.

They hid behind a bush. “What’s the plan?” Pedro asked.

Anderson thought. “Eagle is to the northeast of here, past this encampment,” he said. “We’ll go around, and then continue on our way.”

“If they’re hostile?” Pedro said.

“We can’t start any fights here,” Anderson said. “Can’t risk taking even single guys out. We have to stay hidden at all costs.”

“Damn,” Pedro said. “Roger that.”

Prancer Two went around the encampment and continued toward Eagle’s beacon. The noises of the encampment still sounded strong from behind, and as they went on, the men noticed noises coming from other areas. They were clearings, the ones they had seen scattered around, filled with these bug-horses that took down an F-15. It was a scary thing to think about, but PJs don’t think about what’s scary, only what needs to be done.

They made their way to a road or path in the forest and stopped next to it, behind the trees. Anderson looked out to the right, Pedro to the left. Down the path, Pedro saw a group of the bugs coming toward them.

“Down!” he whispered.

Both men dropped to the ground and lay completely still. Minutes later, along the path, more of the bugs walked by, hissing and talking in their odd language. They held torches and were armed with swords, spears, and a single crossbow. Anderson and Pedro looked up when the patrol was well beyond them and watched it from behind.

“I guess they have patrols,” Pedro said.

“They do,” Anderson said. “They are, without a doubt, intelligent.”

“Do you think they purposely took down our jet?” Pedro asked.

“As menacing as they physically appear to be, I won’t let that make me judge them,” Anderson said. “That said, they might have. And given how it happened, they might not be the biggest fans of foreigners right now.”

“Greeat,” Pedro said. “How far to find Eagle?”

Anderson checked the locator. “He’s about half a click further north.”

They continued on, but throughout the rest of the forest, they encountered other patrols searching in the darkness. The men couldn’t take any chances; if they were searching in this kind of dark, they must have had good night sight, and so the men took cover behind trees any time they heard a patrol. The patrols in the trees didn’t carry torches and were much quieter than the one they saw on the path, so they had to listen hard.

As they came up on the location of the beacon, the PJs were forced to crawl through brush to avoid being seen by hostile patrols not too far away. Thanks to them being quiet, and the patrols having naturally noisier bodies, they were able to sneak up to see where exactly the beacon was.

They did not like what they saw. Ahead of them, they saw who they could easily guess to be Eagle with bound hands behind his back and the beacon laying on the ground behind him. The bug-horses around him were celebrating their capture, and once finished, they started pushing him off into the forest to bring him to God knows where.

“Padre One, Prancer two-one,” Anderson said.

The radio crackled. “How c-py, -ver?” the response came.

Anderson silently cursed. “Eagle is in someone else’s nest. No rescue imminent. We’re moving to follow.”

“Copy, Pr-cer two-one,” Padre One replied.

Pedro looked on. “Follow?” he asked.

“Follow,” Anderson replied.

As the capturing force escaped into the darkness, proud of what they had taken from the skies, they were unknowingly followed from behind into the darkness. Because if there is one thing a PJ will never do, it’s allow a fellow American to go into the darkness alone.