Chemical Reaction: The U.S. presses Libya over a nerve-gas plant

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It was almost a minute after noon when the lead Tomcat pilot informed his flying mates, "Bogeys have jinked back at me again for the fifth time. They're on my nose now, inside of 20 miles." He could wait no longer. "Master arm on," he announced, taking the final step before delivering a Sparrow. At 14 miles separation, he barked, "Fox 1. Fox 1." He had triggered a Sparrow, called Fox 1 (a Sidewinder is Fox 2). The lead Tomcat launched another Sparrow at ten miles. Both missiles missed.

Instead of fleeing, the Floggers accelerated and continued their pursuit. They were now within six miles of the two F-14s. The Tomcat pilots then split their formation in a classic maneuver. As the two Floggers followed the U.S. wing plane, the lead Tomcat circled to get on the Libyan jets' tails.

The F-14 on the wing delivered a Sparrow, which hit one of the Libyan planes. "Good kill! Good kill!" shouted one of the Americans. The lead Tomcat closed on the remaining Flogger. At a mere 1.5 miles from the MiG -- a deadly distance in modern combat -- its RIO squeezed his Sidewinder trigger. The heat-seeking missile smashed into the Flogger. "Good kill!" cried a crewman. "Let's get out of here." The two Libyan pilots parachuted into the sea.

Why would Gaddafi provoke such a one-sided fight? "We're still scratching our heads," said the Pentagon's Howard. "It doesn't make sense." Yet Western standards of what does or does not make sense may bear little relation to the actions and motivations of Gaddafi, a man prone to mood swings and outlandish gestures. Gaddafi has become just about everybody's most despised dictator, but he holds a special place in Ronald Reagan's demonology. The President has repeatedly called Gaddafi a terrorist and a barbarian, and he proudly sports a T shirt that ridicules his No. 1 enemy with the legend KHADDAFY DUCK -- MAD DUCK OF THE MIDEAST.

The U.S. has a solid record of willingness to sock Libya. In 1981 the Navy shot down two Libyan jets whose pilots rashly fired at American planes over the Gulf of Sidra, which Gaddafi claims to be Libyan territory. Then, in March 1986, U.S. naval units deliberately steamed across what Gaddafi had called the "line of death," which marked the northern boundary of the gulf. When Libyan gunboats sailed out to challenge the Sixth Fleet, two were sunk, and a shore radar installation was destroyed. The following month, after a Libyan- backed terrorist bombed a disco in West Berlin, killing one American and injuring 60 others, U.S. F-111 and A-6 bombers attacked Tripoli and Benghazi and even struck at Gaddafi's headquarters in an apparent attempt to kill him.

Small wonder that Gaddafi -- and the rest of the world -- took the U.S. threats seriously. The Administration's hints of force were partly intended to bully other countries into withholding technical materials and personnel from the Rabta plant. "If we can scare the foreigners out, Gaddafi can't run the plant," said a U.S. intelligence source. Last September American diplomats warned their counterparts in West Germany, Italy, France, Britain and Japan that the U.S. had persuasive intelligence that the facility was intended to produce toxic chemicals on a massive scale. Nearby is a steelworks that can turn out the shells and casings needed to complete the poisonous weapons.