In 1968, amid the heat and shadow of the Vietnam War, a Green Beret platoon is swept by an unseen threat in a remote jungle valley. Their commander, Colonel Jericho, summons a replacement force known as the Vulture Squad, a LRRP unit assembled to track down the missing Green Berets who were on a classified mission. The squad is built from a mix of seasoned and rookie soldiers: team leader Sergeant First Class Ryan Baker, second-in-command Sergeant Xavier Wise, rookie radio operator Leon Verne, former Air Cavalry fighters Eli Taylor and Charlie Miller, and the snipers Gerald Keyes and Logan Stovall. The mission has a clear purpose, but the dangers that await them will test every skill and nerve they possess.
After an airdrop, the Vultures begin the grueling search, following faint clues into the valley’s maze of caves. They discover birdlike tracks and enormous feathers left behind by an unknown animal. An unseen predator launches an ambush on Baker, but he manages to drive it off alive. Their pursuit of the Green Berets leads them through a dark tunnel, where the trail erupts into chaos as a pack of Deinonychus plunges the squad into a desperate fight. They barely escape, but the chaos tears the team apart, with Baker and Verne separated from the others.
Meanwhile, the Vulture Squad is stalked by a Soviet unit known as the Dogs of War, a mixed group that includes Tolstoy, Nikita, Sergei, Aleksandr, and Con Nhen, a Vietnamese guerrilla fighter. Aleksandr falls to the monstrous attacker that plagued Baker, cutting the distance between the two teams and raising the stakes for everyone involved. The valley’s peril intensifies when Baker and Verne stumble upon a family of Tyrannosaurus, a terrifying encounter that leaves them shaken but alive. They are eventually found and aided by Sofia Wagner, a Soviet paleontologist who has taken refuge at an abandoned research station.
Sofia’s explanations throw the mission into a new and almost unbelievable light. She reveals that a science experiment overseen by USSR General Grigory Borodin inadvertently opened a gateway that pulled a menagerie of dinosaurs into the valley. Borodin is not just a careless engineer; he has murdered colleagues who questioned his methods, and Sofia has been forced to survive by any means necessary. She identifies Baker’s attacker as a larger, more dangerous species of raptor, hinting at a threat far beyond what the soldiers expected. As the Vultures try to regroup, the Dogs of War close in, and Keyes is wounded in the leg in the ensuing firefight.
The skies grow even more perilous as a flock of Quetzalcoatlus descends, killing Tolstoy and sending both squads scrambling in fear and fury. The Deinonychus pack closes in again, dragging Keyes away; he fights to the end, fatally wounded, but not before stabbing one of the raptors in the eye and earning a temporary reprieve for his comrades. The group escapes by boat, but Keyes’s courage remains with them as he sacrifices himself in a final stand with his grenades.
Sofia then unpacks the bigger picture: Borodin’s project is a particle collider designed to create wormholes that would teleport Soviet troops anywhere in the world. A catastrophic malfunction during its first test opened a wormhole that dragged the dinosaurs into the present day. Realizing the existential danger, the Vultures agree to disable the collider. Baker reaches out to Jericho to pull them out, but Jericho, who wants to preserve the collider for a potential strategic advantage, insists that it stay intact until reinforcements arrive.
The battlefield explodes into further upheaval as more Deinonychus attack. Stovall makes the ultimate sacrifice to give his teammates a chance to disengage and rally. Back at Borodin’s base, Soviet soldiers massacre an infant Tyrannosaurus, provoking a deadly counterattack from the parents. The tyrannosaurs’ brutal rampage consumes many of Borodin’s troops, forcing the Vulture Squad to press forward with their plan. In a tense sequence, Baker and Sofia recruit a disillusioned Nikita and Sergei, while Miller confronts Con Nhen and ultimately dies when he detonates his explosives to destroy a critical chokepoint.
With the collider’s power failing, the tyrannosaurs depart with their young, and Sofia races to deactivate the device. Jericho arrives with American reinforcements as a fearless pack of raptors assaults the Soviet ranks, tearing through Borodin, Nikita, and Taylor. In a final act of bravery, Baker sacrifices himself to hold the predators at bay long enough for the others to regroup. Sofia, Verne, Xavier, and Sergei join Jericho’s forces to fend off the remaining raptors, and the team escapes as explosives from the Vulture Squad destroy the collider, sealing the threat.
In the aftermath, Jericho mourns what’s lost and regrets destroying the collider, fearing it could have shifted the Cold War balance in the United States’ favor. Sofia, however, warns that the damage is already done: the dinosaurs have begun migrating beyond the valley, potentially altering the world’s future in ways no one could have anticipated. The mission ends with a hard-won withdrawal, a grim reminder that some discoveries come with consequences no one could have foreseen, and that the line between science and warfare can blur in the most dangerous ways.
