Belly of the Beast

Outside of God, only a few people know of the secrets that have unfolded in this vast expanse of desert. Every President since the 40’s has let something questionable but necessary happen here. Some of the projects have become public; atomic bomb tests, developing spy planes, the Stealth Fighter. The once fertile soil has been reduced to sand; punished under millennia of naked sunlight. The sparse vegetation clings to life, using frail roots to choke every drop of moisture out of the ground. This is a skeletal existence. Those with the strongest will to survive – unlike their lazy tropical counterparts – do so on the razor-thin wire of desert life.

A few small towns dot the outline of this area, well aware that they will remain unaware of what goes on in this black hole in southern Nevada, inhabited only by a small group of defense contractors and Air Force personnel unfortunate enough to be stationed here. Countless engineers and builders will never receive credit for the work they have done here; hundreds of miles of dirt roads blazed across the desert floor and up into the mountains. Mock airports complete with captured foreign aircraft. Houses and buildings constructed in the middle of open bombing ranges, just to be blown up, damage assessed, and built again.

Mike Kazac will be satisfied if another secret left here in the desert was his own. Just an existence, predetermined by birth and death, verified by photos, with a mountain of paperwork in between, documenting a journey along an established path. Nothing new to report, nothing to contribute to our social progress. He has done what few have done before, but nothing to truly call his own. Hardship and heartache, pain and accomplishment, but nothing that people have not already written books about, or set procedures for. In his journey, through youthful rebellion, military service, combat deployments, and endless training, he searched for the perfect place to fade away. He has seen the beautiful, the colorful, the bizarre, the ancient, the rotten, the macabre, the hot and the cold, but never the unknown. But this, this enchanted emptiness, hidden away from the outside world, ruled by the cactus and the lizard, will be as close as he can get. He will be the unknown.

The Nellis Testing and Training Range has become a true home, ending a transient life that ultimately led him here. Growing up around empty Midwestern towns left him to dream of places with more substance. After high school, a final dispute with a girlfriend drove Mike to leave on his own wandering path, disappearing from friends and family in a fog of autonomy. An innate passion for adrenaline led to a number of cities where he worked whatever and wherever he could to support his habits of rock climbing, backpacking, and skydiving. Construction, restaurants, answering phones, aviation. Depending on the city, an overwhelming feeling of either boredom or conquest would push Mike on to the next place, until an impulse landed him in a chair across from an Air Force recruiter. Mike's demands for excitement and travel were met with a six-year enlistment as a Combat Controller. He ended a long silence with his family when the instructors at Basic Training made him call his parents to tell them he was graduating with honors. They attended the graduation ceremony, seeing Mike for the first time in nearly five years. Stories of the mountains he had climbed, houses he had built, near-death survival experiences, and the 106 jumps he had logged before enlisting were not told, simply summed up with, “I just went away.”

He volunteered for the secret world away from Fox News, and carved out a niche in a small community alongside the SEAL teams, Special Forces, special intelligence teams, counter-terrorist units, and the other elites around the world. Six years turned into ten. Over time, Mike picked up a few names, but the only one that really stuck was “Pro”, an open prefix.

Ever since its inception in 1947, the Air Force has always been searching for the next big leap to stay ahead of the country’s foes. The brass at the Pentagon will hang a contractual carrot in front of the CEO’s of leading manufacturers, outlining the specifications for the future of America’s Air Force. This immediately begins a process of doodling on cocktail napkins, which will be handed off to the thankless engineers who, locked in a shop floor dungeon with a CAD program, transform an idea into numbers, angles, materials, and blueprints. The secrecy of the program then begins, not to deny the enemy, but to deny the other companies the competitive edge for the Government’s dollar. Proposals are submitted to the Air Force, and capitalism reigns. Sometime later down the line, a tangible example of the CEO’s sketch ends up here in the desert to be put through its paces.

The Air Force then hand-picks a pioneer with enough balls and experience to climb in and break the Beast. For months, even years on end, the project and its personnel spend the development period here, away from the public, away from the comforts of a home base, away from the cover story the Air Force puts out to explain the strange sights in the sky and explain the time away to the wives. The truth lives here, protected by mountain ranges, and a few tight lips. After the scorching sun retreats for another day, the nocturnal reclaim the desert air to find the limits of the Beast’s flight envelope.

And tonight, as the Beast runs free across the Range, a few other night crawlers chase the Beast in a Pave Hawk helicopter flying the call sign CREEPY-22. Beneath the deafening pulse of turbine engines, Mike and his teammates sit on the floor of a dark, cramped cabin. anchored to the aircraft by nylon lanyards attached to climbing harnesses. Specialized rescue equipment, a heavy fast-rope, heart monitors, oxygen bottles, and a massive internal fuel tank take up the rest of the cabin, all supporting the mission as a search-and-rescue aircraft in case the Beast were to go down. A pleasant late August breeze streamed through the open side doors and across Mike’s face as he rested his head back against the massive fuel tank occupying the rear of the cabin.

From the right seat of the cockpit, Captain Steve Banhart commands a 4-man crew including Sam Gorman, a fellow Captain in the left seat. The two pilots scanned over their instrument panel through night vision goggles, hung before their eyes. A pair of enlisted men manned the weapon stations just behind the cockpit. Alex Dyer, a young aerial gunner, sat quietly in his outward-facing seat, behind a fearsome six-barreled minigun that hung out of the left-side window in front of him. In the opposite window, flight engineer Chris Vogt rested his arms over top of his minigun.

All of the men share a history in the Air Force Special Operations community, and an interest in doing the dirty work with no pats on the back or even the satisfaction of relating their stories to anyone beyond these desert walls.

Casey Desai, a Pararescueman shared the open right side door with Mike. Casey spent his first few years in the Air Force turning wrenches on fighter jets, and actually landed a spot on the airshow circuit with the Thunderbirds. But after a year of waxing floors, polishing aircraft and grooming uniforms for hours, he turned around and volunteered for the blood, sweat, dirt, and guts of Pararescue. A face obscured under a helmet, headset, and night vision goggles, stared into the black desert beyond the helicopter. Casey lifted a hand from the carbine lying across his lap and moved up his chest rig to a radio key. His other hand pointed out toward some exposed crags in the Belted mountain range. Casey pressed the key, and a short chirp broke the dull static in Mike’s headset. “There’s some nice virgin rock out there, man.”

Mike swung his night vision down from the front of his helmet. The twin black tunnels awoke to paint the darkness with varied shades of green. A brief strain on Mike’s retinas softened to a crisp image of serrated mountains rising out of a valley flowing with sand, rock, and heat. Miles to the south, the bright playa of Groom Lake stood against the darkness enclosed by mountains, inhospitable desert, and decades of zany conspiracy theories that the public has smeared across it. A few lights remained on from the remote base along the edge of the vast dry lake. Further on, long beyond the night’s horizon, a pocket of light from the glitz of the Las Vegas strip taunts the men of the Range. But these men prefer to spend their days off exploring the forgotten corners of this land. As Casey pointed out, every now and then they will find a new, untried area, and hike out for a few days. They can ascend to get front row seats to the bombing ranges below. They are crownless kings, conquering the peaks of a false empire.

Across the dark cabin, under the red light of a headlamp, Phillip Camacho flipped through the pages of a small notepad. These support flights have become routine, almost boring; flying big patterns around the desert for hours, waiting for the CEO’s design flaws to surface. The pilots who fly the team around get to log the hours, building time towards their next promotion or aircraft. But the back-seaters get next to nothing out of it, sparing some conversation and crag spotting.

Tonight’s flight has allowed the men over three hours of prime scouting, with only brief interruptions to listen to the Beast and its handlers talk back and forth about changing test modes, angles of attack, and diagnosing a minor deficiency in the aircraft’s flight control system. Fortunately, as a veteran Pararescueman, Camacho was never a man to let his guard down. After a thorough review of his notes for tonight’s flight, Phillip turned off his red light and stuffed the notepad into his chest rig, behind a row of rifle magazines that spanned across his stomach. He then rolled up the sleeves of his desert camouflage uniform until they stretched around his bulging forearms; a move Mike had witnessed countless times before, no matter the temperature. It was part of Phillip’s pre-game routine, believing he was never more than a few minutes away from being elbow-deep in someone’s innards.

By trade, Mike is an air traffic controller. Strip away the guns and the gear and you get just another dude talking to airplanes over the radio. But unlike his conventional colleagues, Mike does not operate from the comfort of a lofty tower with a radar scope. The dirt is his humble post, and his only tools are a list of frequencies and call signs, wrist-top GPS, handheld weather station, and various radios. As a Combat Controller, Mike supports the two PJs. They run in and do the dirty work saving lives while Mike runs right behind them and takes care of communications.

Phillip replied to Casey’s discovery, “I checked it out, and there’s a decent bivy spot about 2 miles north of Wheelbarrow. Approach from the east, then rap down the bluffs on the west side. The lines will be short, but the face runs for a couple of klicks.”

A command from the base’s control tower came over the radio, directing the Beast’s movement. “BRONCO-1, this is ROULETTE. Cleared for low approach runway zero-three right.”

As the words crackled inside seven headsets in the helicopter, Mike observed a grainy black and white ball emerge in his green landscape from behind a row of mountains, streaking over the far-off lakebed.

Casey asked, “So what do you think, 2 or 3 days?”
“Yeah, 3 days would be good. We rotate out next week. We could go then.”

Mike raised his night vision and chimed in with a barb. “3 days? Damn Phillip, with that much time, you might even find a climb you can finish!”
“Not if you’re leading, Mike. You can have your twelves; I’ll take a seven any day.”

Captain Gorman turned around to add, “And if you miss your pickup time again, you’re walking home, Mike. I’m not your mother.”

Mike had developed a jokily begrudged reputation for seeking out hard climbing routes, usually leaving others below to marvel at his talent, but no way to follow him. The tables were turned on a recent outing, as his buddies left him atop a particularly difficult pitch and gave themselves a 30-minute head start to an arranged extraction point.

“Oh come on, you should be thanking me for that extra .6 you put in your logbook. If I’m out there, you’ll close the seniority gap in no time!”

A few light laughs went around the cabin, but a frantic message garbled over the radio, and Captain Banhart raised a hand from the controls, signaling everyone to shut up and listen.

“Mayday, mayday, mayday! BRONCO-1 dead stick. Heading zero-three-zero. Thirty-seven twenty twenty-five, one-one-five forty-four fifteen. Mayday, mayday, mayday!!”

The Beast screamed caution and warning behind the pilot’s voice. Camacho quickly recovered his notepad, and scribbled down the stream of numbers.

HDG 030  37° 20’ 25” N 115° 44’ 15 W           Engine out

“BRONCO’S punching out!”

Beyond a ridgeline miles away, an orange fireball pierced the darkness through the front windows of the helicopter. The team fidgeted and exchanged wide-eyed looks before hearing the poignant call they live to answer.

“CREEPY-22, this is ROULETTE. BRONCO-1 is down, move inbound to last coordinates.”

Captain Banhart immediately fired back a response, “Roger ROULETTE, good copy. We’re on the way.”

Despite the mutual danger, the rescue team allowed themselves a tacit satisfaction, knowing that it was finally their time to switch on and perform. Captain Banhart pushed the helicopter to accelerate across the valley, opening a flood of action. . The Pararescuemen mounted their medical packs, and Mike followed suit with his pack of radios and batteries. Camacho suppressed a surge of adrenaline and flicked a glance at his watch, initiating a practical rescue timeline. Casey smiled and flashed his own notepad at Mike, away from Camacho’s sight.

GAME TIME

Up front, through an endless sequence of throwing switches and pushing buttons, the pilots activated locator systems and scanned radio frequencies. Captain Banhart observed his fuel status, and reported to the team, “Gentlemen, I have 46 minutes of fuel, so work fast.”

Around a fold in the green landscape, a shapeless, unruly field of flames defied the night’s dark silence, overloading night vision with a brilliant white-out.  “NOD’s are nil. Too much light from the fires.”

All of the men flipped up their goggles. The Beast had been gutted in a deep laceration that ran the length of the Groom mountain range. Two parallel ridgelines contained over a quarter-mile of flaming wreckage. A dry riverbed cut through the eastern ridge, exposing tonight’s secrets to the public lands that lay beyond the Range. Captain Banhart entered a left-hand orbit around the crash site, and every pair of eyes hung out of the doors and windows, searching for any sign of the pilot. Shortly after, Captain Gorman announced the failure of their thermal visual aid. “FLIR is nil. The fire’s making everything too hot.”

“We’re back to the fuckin’ stone age,” Casey snapped.

As Phillip noticed the passing of the six minute mark, he ran through a mental list of possible injuries. Impact trauma, concussion, and six minutes of exposure to a fiery, unmarked grave. With force, Captain Gorman reported the burst of digital wailing in his headset. “Boss, I got the beacon from his prick-12 on Alpha.”

“Try the DF… see if we can pinpoint him.”

Phillip exhaled in relief, and muttered to himself, “Ok buddy, tell me where you are.”
After a parachute landing, a downed airman should broadcast a beacon signal with their survival radio, followed by a voice command, updating his position and condition. The rescue forces know this procedure just as well as the flight crews, as failure to follow these steps could indicate a number of problems. His radio could be malfunctioning, or he may by physically unable to use his voice due to injury. In combat, he may have landed in a bad neighborhood and can’t speak without risking capture.

No one spoke as the team waited for the pilot’s voice command. In their silent thoughts, they would rather hear nothing at all than just the beacon. Being held in the middle ground between searching and rescuing allows the mind to race, betraying their professionalism. Mike pressed his lips together as he watched blades of fire lick the desert below him.

Captain Banhart broke the silence and broadcasted over the frequency, trying to raise the pilot. His commands rolled over the airwaves with an unpunctuated, monotone signature, “BRONCO this is CREEPY how copy over.”

The radio waves beamed into the deaf, endless desert. As the silence yielded to the immutable whine of the helicopter’s engines, all seven men aboard CREEPY-22 intensely scanned their sectors, suppressing any expectation of the downed pilot’s response. Captain Banhart called again, slower and more deliberate.

“BRONCO, this is CREEPY. How copy? Over.”

The helicopter entered a wide column of black smoke rising from the valley. The cabin went dark and blurry, and Mike held his breath against the hot prowling clouds. His eyes watered, and he could hear a faint cough from elsewhere in the aircraft. The helicopter emerged into the clear, natural air, and the team regained the burning landscape below.

“BRONCO, this is CREEPY. How copy? Over.”

Phillip recognized the layout of the crash, and reported to his team, “He came in low and fast. It’s going to be a busy scene; he may be in the middle of all that.” As flamecast shadows danced around the cabin, Dyer let out a compassionate plea, “Christ, he’s burning up down there.”

“BRONCO, this is CREEPY. Nothing heard, switching to Bravo, over.”

Phillip snapped away from the wreckage below, lowered his night vision and spotted Tikaboo Peak, twenty miles across a vast valley to the east. Over the years the peak has become a perennial rallying point for vulturous UFO watchers and conspiracy theorists, hoping to peek into the nearest reaches of the Range. They are surely watching the night’s events with binoculars and a radio scanner in hand. From their public vantage point, they already know that a secret aircraft has crashed inside the Range, and they can hear every word that the team transmits. Phillip raised his goggles in disgust. With the rest of his team watching, Phillip pointed out to the land beyond his control.

“They know we’re here.”

Phillip crossed the cabin to approach Mike. He pulled his microphone away from his mouth to hide from the preying ears and spoke directly into Mike’s eyes. “Pro, ready Uniform Secure. I don’t want those motherfuckers listening if this guy’s hurt.”

Any sensitive information would have to be transmitted with an encrypted system, available only to the helicopter and the big radio in Mike’s pack. Camacho resumed his post, and Mike punched away at a keypad on his shoulder.

“BRONCO, this is CREEPY. Nothing heard, switching to Guard, over.”

After another volley on three channels went unheeded, the pilot of CREEPY-22 changed his tone, stripping his voice of his commissioned rank, thousands of flight hours, instinctive radio protocols, and instead spoke with the voice of a father. The voice of Steve Banhart. “BRONCO, if you can hear me, for some reason I can’t hear you. I need to know where you are so we can get you out of there, sir. Acknowledge.”

Flustered by the silence, Captain Banhart turned in his seat to look at Camacho. “What do you think Phillip?”
“He’s alive enough to pull out his radio and turn it on. That’s no accident. He’s alive.”

Years of professional familiarity between the pilot and the lead PJ cut through the question of what to do next. “I can’t see any place to set it down. It’s bad ground.”
“We need to go in upwind, as close as you can.”
“Ok, you pick your spot, Phillip. I’ll call the height.”

Camacho returned his focus outboard. The rolling flames swayed with the wind moving up through the gully toward the north. Phillip rested one hand on Dyer’s back and with the other, pointed to a specific spot near the south end of the crash site. “Give me a rope, right there.”

After Dyer relayed the spot to Captain Banhart, the pilot craned his head around to see it for himself. Satisfied with the PJ’s choice, he approved the fast-rope insertion. “Ok Phillip, I’ll getcha in there.”

As the flight crew discussed wind directions, entry and egress routes, and drop height, Camacho quickly briefed his team. “We’re dropping at the southeast corner. Casey, you’re number 1 out the door. Pro, you’re number 2, and I’ll be right on your ass. Regroup 20 meters off the nose, and we’ll sweep to the north. Stay in sight! Whoever finds him takes the airway. Questions?”

Mike and Casey accepted the plan with confidence and small nods. “Ok gentlemen. Be smart out there, and everyone comes home!”

Phillip moved to the fast-rope hanging at the back of the cabin. He searched through the bundled coils and found a set of chemlights taped to the bottom end. He bent the plastic tubes in his hands, and the 90 foot-long serpent came to life with a crack of red light. Together, Phillip and Casey reached up to the ceiling to extend a bar with the top end of the rope out of the left door. Camacho returned to Dyer’s side, leaving the two other men to sink into their final preparations. Mike pulled his protective glasses from his eyes and wiped away the dust and sweat. He secured his carbine to his hip with a catch loop on his belt, and then slid a pair of heavy leather gloves over his work gloves. As the aircraft circled around to approach the south side of the crash site, Captain Banhart called to the team, “The drop will be five-zero feet. 1 minute out.”

Camacho replied, “Ok Boss, we’re going off comm.”

Captain Gorman turned around to send them off with a nod, “Go get him, boys!”

The rescue team unplugged their headsets from the aircraft’s intercom system and plugged in to their personal radios. Mike followed his lanyard to its anchor on the floor, unclipped the carabiner, and clipped it to the side of his harness. As the umbilicals were severed, the 3-man team became ALBAN-07. Casey grabbed the rope with one hand and sat down at the edge of the door, feet hanging overboard. With an anxious breath, Mike checked his gear one last time, and then crouched behind Casey. Captain Banhart made a call to his crew, and then Vogt relayed a hand signal to the rescue team, pinching his thumb and first finger together. Camacho yelled over the shrieking engines, “Thirty seconds!!”

Dyer extended his arm out of his window to keep Casey gated in. The Beast challenged the men, and spit a fiery tower from its ruptured bowels. Casey lowered his head to his chest, surely drawing his focus with a deep breath. Captain Banhart banked hard into a committing turn toward the realm of the Beast. The rotor blades swept up an enveloping cloud of hot dust as the Captain pulled back on the reins, sliding the helicopter into a hover fifty feet above the flames. Vogt called, “Rope out!”

Camacho pulled a quick release, and the coils of rope plunged into the conflagration that awaited them. Dyer watched the red chemlights as the rope fell through the swirling dust, and they splashed and settled in the sand. With the bottom of the rope safe on the ground, Dyer withdrew his arm and released the PJ. Casey clasped the rope next to his head, leaned outboard and slid down into the pit. As Casey disappeared, Mike reached out for the rippling rope. The twin engines howled at him from above. Beholding the wild inferno that lay below him, knowing he would soon be there, Mike smiled from the masterful control of being exactly where he wanted to be.

Camacho aimed a tyrannical point of his entire arm directly at Mike. “GO!!” Mike stepped out and into the crispy blast of turbine exhaust. His heavy pack immediately pulled him down by his shoulders, and he fought to hug the rope tight against his body. The thick nylon scales ran through his hands, biting through the gloves with a poisonous friction. From below, the dominant heat raced up at Mike, igniting his nervous system with a jolt of fighting response. Mike looked down the rope. In the rusty haze he spotted a strip of reflective tape on Casey’s helmet sprint away toward the front of the helicopter. As the rocky sand closed toward him, Mike tightened his grip around the rope. His hands burned with agony, his feet slammed to the ground. Mike cleared the rope, ripped his carbine out of its catch, and ran to kneel next to Casey. Casey raised his carbine and beamed a contemptuous stare straight into the fires before him.

The roaring helicopter slapped the flames and blasted the men with sand and loose rocks shot out from the down wash. Mike stripped off his leather gloves, stuffed them into a leg pocket, and then looked over his shoulder to see Camacho’s silhouette slither down to the ground. As he cleared, Dyer released the top end of the rope, collapsing into a limp pile on the desert floor. Captain Banhart pulled the helicopter back into orbit, and vanished into the dusty blur above. As Camacho ran to jump over sagebrush, the Pararescueman led the charge into a field of burning metal intestines.

“ROULETTE, this is CREEPY. ALBAN-07 is on the ground.”

A smoky ceiling hung over their heads and entombed the team in a blistered orange glow. Mike followed a trench of dirt carved by the Beast skidding across the valley, and he ducked under a large tail section that had sliced through a tall saguaro cactus. A bank of the exposed wiring boiled to a neon liquid, dripping into a molten pool in the sand. Mike spotted a splattered trail of metal chunks shining in the destructive light. To his left, Casey jogged past the disarray of a ravaged carcass, stripped of its skin and extremities. Aggressive, rolling flames rejoiced atop the melting heap at the center of the crash site. Casey stopped, waved, and yelled across the flames to Mike, “Hey! Cockpit!”



Mike and Casey cautiously approached the burning fuselage, and Casey called into the opaque heat, “BRONCO!”

Mike took one step closer, but the pressing heat against his skin forced a retreat. He pulled a hand from his carbine to shield his face, allowing just enough relief to recognize details in the metal pile. His eyes followed the few graceful design curves that remained, but a distinct cutout at the front of the fuselage marked the absence of the glass canopy. “Forget it, he punched out. Let’s move on,” a voice called from behind Mike. In the bright, flickering illumination, Camacho stood tall with his carbine resting up against his shoulder. With a single wave he directed the men to carry on with the search.



Up ahead, a contorted wing spar punctured through what remained of the skeletal framing and jutted into the black smoke. A strong updraft carried a syncopated crackle of combustion and the musky stench of wasted jet fuel. The helicopter chirped from somewhere up above, waiting for a command.

The fires consumed all of the oxygen in the air, leaving the men to suck on the hot carbon remnants. The sickening smoke blew across the valley, and the scene became a dark, tight haze. The air temperature surged close to two hundred degrees. ‘I have to stop,’ Mike thought. He looked back, but found himself surrounded by flames reaching to pull him in. He could not see where he had entered, or a path leading out. By instinct he dropped to one knee, but the pounding heat took him down to all fours. The desert floor rejected Mike with a sudden burning sting on his palms. A miasmic stream exploited Mike’s weakened state and slithered into his mouth and throat. He hacked and coughed out a breath of smoke, and then another, and struggled to find clean air. Mike pulled the hose of his water bladder to his mouth, and sucked in a mouthful of boiling water, scalding his tongue. He had to spit it out onto the rocks, sizzling next to his gloved hands. Mike’s brain cooked under his skull and helmet, and a disturbing tingle moved down his spine.

Crawling alone in the flaming labyrinth, Mike had been pushed to the point of personal survival, and the clock was ticking. His body screamed at him that it wanted out, and now. But somewhere in this mess, the Beast had taken the pilot captive. Mike couldn’t walk out of there knowing that he’d be leaving behind someone who didn’t have that choice. He regained his carbine from its sling and pushed a foot under his chest. Through the haze of smoke and flame, Mike caught a glimpse of one of the PJs kicking over a warped metal panel. Mike sucked in a hot lungful, stood up, and ran toward his teammate. His pack pulled against his shoulders with every step. Mike stepped over a mangled set of landing gear and found Casey waiting for him. Flames spanned the reflection of Casey’s goggles as he collected Mike with a hand on his shoulder, “You ok Mike?”
“I’m fine. Let’s move.”
“Ok buddy. Stay close and check left.”

Ahead of them, a blanket of toxins crept up a scorched hillside littered with melted plastic and aluminum shards. Short breaths struggled to serve the legs that strained to push up the hill. After ascending a hundred feet or so, Casey stopped to use the high ground. Below them, packs of autonomous flames devoured the remains of the experimental aircraft. What was once a spearhead to the country’s future now lay in ruins, worth no more than the sand or the rocks that it will rest with.

Further uphill, behind a column of black smoke, an orange and white parachute fluttered in the hot, rising air. Camacho’s attention snagged at the sight, and he pounced to find the pilot’s body face-down at the end of a nylon web.  Phillip released the tangled parachute and pushed the pilot onto his back to secure his airway. “Sir, can you hear me?!” A long, wheezing groan came from the unconscious pilot.

“BRONCO, can you hear me?” Phillip solicited a response by forcefully dragging his knuckles up and down the pilot’s sternum. The nerves sent a trickle of signals to the brainstem. The only defense it could muster was to hunch the shoulders. Phillip glanced over the pilot’s body, searching for any obvious injury.  A trail of dark blood ran from the nose across the aged right cheek, over brush cuts, past the closed eyes and into the gray hair emerging from the sides of the pilot’s deep blue helmet. As he looked down the charred flight suit, Phillip noted a pair of broken ankles, but instead focused on the flames crawling closer and closer to their position. A green and black PRC-112 survival radio lay next to the pilot’s right hand, no longer used after he blacked out. Ejecting so close to the ground meant his parachute never had a chance to save him. He slammed into the hillside. A few seconds of fleeting consciousness allowed him to pull out his radio and fire off the beacon signal. Phillip yelled down to the others, “Tally-ho!! Litter up!”

Hearing the call from the darkness uphill, Casey turned to Mike. “Let’s go!”

The two men hustled and labored the last few steps up to find Camacho on his knees, holding the pilot’s neck in place. As the leader of the team, Camacho took command and gave orders. “I got no response Casey, let’s get him out of here, now! I need C-spine and the litter.”

Casey dropped his backpack to the ground and pulled a neck brace from an outer pocket. As the two PJs worked together to set the neck brace, Mike retrieved a nylon litter strapped to the bottom of Casey’s pack. He released a single buckle and rolled out the litter next to the pilot.

Phillip hooked the pilot under the arms, sat him up, and the pilot moaned with subconscious fight. Casey grabbed the pilot’s leather flight boots, waited for the command to lift, and read the thoughts behind Phillip’s sober face. ‘Broken bones never killed anyone.’ It was a morbid quip, one of an endless supply that Phillip uses to justify his many dynamic decisions. At the risk of incurring further injury, the PJs had to move the pilot out of the immediate danger, and treat him later.

“1, 2, 3, up!” The PJs swung the pilot onto the stretcher. They carried the wrecked body uphill toward the cool, dark relief of the open desert. With his hands full, pushing up the hillside, Phillip looked over his shoulder and called to Mike between tortured breaths, “Pro, put out the Tally-ho and go secure.”

Mike keyed his radio to contact the orbiting helicopter. “CREEPY this is ALBAN-07 Charlie. We have a Tally-ho on the survivor, standby for an update on Uniform Secure, over.”

“Roger 7-Charlie, good hunting! Pushing Secure.”

At a ridgeline above the flames, the PJs set the pilot down. Mike dragged an arm across his sweaty forehead and bent over with fatigue. Camacho took no rest and knelt over the pilot’s face. “Sir, can you hear me?”

Still no response. Casey pulled off a work glove, revealing a black latex glove underneath. With a calming touch, Casey laid two fingers on the pilot’s right wrist to extend some humanity to the injured man, and also a veiled attempt to collect data. Casey checked his watch. Through the bedlam of radio traffic, a burning valley and his own raised heartbeat, his fingers detected a steady stream of soft beats, declaring the emergency inside. After six seconds, he reported to Phillip, “90, and thready.”

Mike stood on the ridgeline, and felt a chilling wind rush up from the backside of the mountains. He turned around, and faced a stoic valley washed in silver moonlight. The wind raced through the flatlands far below and rustled the bushes stippled across the foothills. Mike opened a hand at his side, greeting the breeze that comforted his lungs. He tilted his head back, and with a long exhale, felt his throbbing heart ease.

Now that he had established first contact, Casey could let a modern tool continue his work. He reached into a top pocket on his chest rig and pulled out a black cube barely larger than a silver dollar. He pinched the cube, opening two halves, and clipped it to the pilot’s first finger. After a few seconds, two sets of small red numbers appeared, and tracked the pilot’s pulse and blood-oxygen saturation. “O2 sat is 74%.”

Phillip turned on his headlamp, and switched it to white light. He gently rested a hand on the pilot’s forehead and rolled the eyelids back. The eyes – a glowing tint of marbled jade – did not focus, follow, or defend against the direct white light.

Phillip switched back to red light and peacefully talked to his team. “Ok, let’s go head to toe. Pro, help me out here. Get the bag.”

With only their dim red headlamps for light, the two PJ’s zipped open the pilot’s survival vest, and navigated their hands through an algorithm rehearsed to the point of automation. Mike stepped down from the ridgeline and opened Casey’s clamshell backpack on the desert floor. His red light scanned across an overstuffed – but neatly organized – inventory of bandages, drugs, and medical equipment. Mike’s years of working with PJs allowed him many opportunities for cross-training, and the team benefits by having an extra set of hands during fast-paced situations. Very few air traffic controllers are trained to jump out of planes at night, kill the bad guys and then set up landing zones in their backyard. And fewer still are trained to set up a Bag Valve Mask or start an IV if needed.

Lying on top of labeled zipper pouches was a thick, flexible rubber bag marked, “AIR”.  Mike pulled out the deflated bag and a molded face piece lying under the bag. Mike opened a valve and the bag inflated to the size of a football. He then pushed the face piece out of its stowed position and connected it to the bag. Mike passed the assembled lung over to Phillip, who then set it on the pilot’s chest.

Phillip grazed up the abdomen and disturbed a tender ribcage, and the sudden rush of pain signals shocked the pilot awake. He jerked and screamed to escape the pain. But moving away from one injury would agitate another, and the PJs worked to keep the pilot still. “Sir, breathe deep and relax. We’re here to help.”

The pilot could only respond with unorganized cries and obscenities. Mike looked at the tight grimace on the pilot’s face until the pilot shot a focused scowl at Mike, appearing only as a dark, armed figure beset by the flames below. Phillip’s fourteen years of experience had trained him to ignore the emotional connotations of his patient’s pain, and instead view the human body as a complex biological machine with interconnected sensors, systems, and subsystems. The grunts and yells, visible blood and burned skin all demanded Phillip’s attention, but will be quickly and coldly prioritized as indicators of a damaged part. There was little they could do to relieve his physical pain; only keep him alive while delivering him to a higher level of care, and keep him from injuring himself further in the process. The pain is something the pilot is going to have to live with during this evolution, and something the PJs will have to tune out.

Phillip grabbed the pilot’s hand to give him a vent to squeeze out his pain. He also used the grip to sneak a glance at the pulse oximeter, and noted the sharp rise in pulse. After a few more labored breaths, Phillip lowered their clasped hands to the pilot’s chest. This softened the pilot’s defenses, and Phillip made another attempt to engage with him. “What’s your name, cowboy?”

After two staccato grunts, the pilot mustered enough wind to say, “Lewis.”

“Ok Lewis, tell me where it hurts.”

For the first time, Lewis looked Phillip in the eye. “I can’t breathe.”
“Does your chest hurt?
“Yes! And my head fuckin’ hurts.”

Phillip recalled the splayed ankles, and asked, “Do you think you can walk?”
Lewis reeled at the thought. “No! No. My legs…I think they’re broken.”

“Ok sir, we’re going to get you out of here. I’m not going to leave you, ok?”

Casey worked his hands down the pilot’s shins, and gripped the fractured ankles. This sent another jolt of pain through the pilot’s system, and he swung and kicked at the PJs. “It fucking hurts! Help me!”
“Sir, I know it hurts, but I need to you breathe as deep as you can, and relax. Don’t fight me.”

The cries became shorter and more acute. A conscious, panicked body heightens the demand for air, and it is only a matter of time before the balance is thrown the whole system fails. Phillip and Casey held the pilot against his own flails, and waited for his oxygen-deprived brain to give up and stop sending signals. The throes lessened with the dwindling supply, until they extinguished and the pilot’s body fell limp into an unconscious state.

Phillip unclipped his chinstrap and removed his polymer helmet, setting it in the sand beside him. Bands of sweat-soaked hair pressed against the top of his head.  He pulled a black stethoscope out of a leg pocket, pulled his headset down to his neck and slipped the earbuds into his ears. The long whimper of a punctured lung, struggling to function, did not please him.

“Pneumo.”
Casey connected eyes with Phillip and softly postured, “OUTLAW?”

Phillip took a moment to look over the debilitated pilot, added up the mounting injuries, and then reluctantly replied, “Yeah. OUTLAW.”

Phillip waved to Mike, ready to relay his findings over the secure frequency. Mike handed off the telephone end of the radio just as Phillip pulled it away. “CREEPY this is ALBAN-07 Alpha. Confirmed Tally-ho on the survivor. Execute OUTLAW. We’ll re-contact on Victor Two, over.”

The lead PJ delivered a complicated blow, one that Captain Banhart had feared for the last fourteen minutes. The extent of the pilot’s injuries exceeded the capability of the base’s small medical facility. The remote base thrives and dies on its own isolation. The rows of mountains, endless miles of restricted land and nighttime flair cloak the base in secrecy, but also put the nearest hospital with an Intensive Care Unit nearly 100 miles away. With little fuel remaining, CREEPY-22 is unable to deliver.

The Captain squashed a creeping sense of dejection and assumed his duty as the aircraft commander. He aimed the helicopter to fly beyond the jagged mountains, into the open valley to the east. He flicked the Autopilot switch under his right thumb and scrolled through the aircraft’s navigation database. He searched and selected a waypoint labeled RZR, and then delegated the physical control of the helicopter to his second-in-command. “Alright Sam, your helo. Maintain left traffic. After we pick ‘em up, fly RAZOR direct. I got comms.”

“7-Alpha, this is CREEPY. Understand OUTLAW. BINGO fuel, direct RAZOR. I’m going to call PEDRO right now.”

Finished with the radio, Camacho was also finished with Mike, and sent him away to keep the process moving. “Pro, I need the Stokes basket. Find us a way out of here.” Implicitly, he also wanted to simply keep Mike occupied, not allowing any distraction by the sight of an injured American. As Mike took his first step away, Camacho pulled him back by the arm, and hard. Excitement lit up his eyes as he barked, “Hey, don’t get lost!”

Mike moved down the ridgeline, hopping over sagebrush and cactus.