Blue sky diffused into a mottled green where the jungle lay on the horizon. Five miles below them the Pacific Ocean looked like tiny ripples on a broad landscape of blue-green flatness, the clouds fluffy wisps. Strung out over a three-mile line flew five aircraft, four of them fighters, following a lumbering KC-10.First Lieutenant Bruce Steele craned his neck around the cockpit of his aging F-15E Strike Eagle. It may have been one of the oldest fighters in the inventory, but it still packed more punch on air-to-ground than the F-22 and F-35 combined.Miniature color TV monitors were inlaid next to switches, buttons, and other instruments on the crowded cockpit panel. A heads-up display jutted up directly in front of him. Cockpit gray clashed against the rest of the color-filled outside world. He felt like he was flying a high-tech video game.Bruce spotted the other aircraft by their contrails, dense white plumes of water vapor spewed from the engines. Just visible two hundred miles in front of him rose a volcanic hill, protruding thousands of feet above the surrounding jungle but still miles beneath the fighters.
