Dispatches Desperate Straits

By CATHY BOOTH, off Key West

The air inside our four-seater Cessna Skymaster is both hot and stale as pilot Eduardo Domaniewicz patrols the sea off Key West. The aquamarine water of the Straits of Florida, so beautiful at first, becomes monotonous after three hours of scanning. Cuba lies just 38 miles to the south, but the horizon here is flat and featureless. The only sound is the lulling drone of the Cessna's engines. In fact, it is so boring and so suffocating in the cabin that two of our spotters are nodding off. Then, abruptly, the radio comes alive: "Stand by for a surprise!" yells a voice, that of another pilot in our six-plane squadron. Minutes tick by. Then the voice broadcasts welcome news: "We have a rafter!" Racing to join the others, we spot our quarry: 13 Cubans standing up in two makeshift rafts, waving, yelling, laughing, crying as we circle overhead. The Cessna swoops down to a mere 50 ft. above the waves. Domaniewicz shouts over the engines, telling me to open the cabin window and drop a flare; the orange smoke will guide the U.S. Coast Guard to the rafters' position. The scene is a blur as we fly by; only later will we learn that a shark had been circling one of the rafts.

This mix of frequent-flyer tedium and Boy's Life thrills is nothing new for Hermanos al Rescate, or Brothers to the Rescue. Three times a week this group of 24 pilots flies out of Miami (usually four planes to a sortie) in order to search for balseros -- rafters -- who are risking their lives to make the 90- mile crossing from Cuba. Each of the Brothers' planes is decorated, bomber- style, with stickers representing rafts saved -- Domaniewicz's alone boasts 32. The Brothers, founded in 1991 by two Cuban-American veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion, have rescued a total of 1,286 men, women and children; the oldest was 77, the youngest a five-day-old infant. Last year, as economic conditions worsened in Cuba, the number of rafters rose to 3,656 -- the highest since the 1980 Mariel boatlift. Often the rafts are empty: by some estimates, 1 in 4 balseros die -- and the rescuers themselves are not without risk. Three Brothers have crashed; all lived, though one is paralyzed. Cuban MiG jets sometimes buzz them. "You have to be a bit adventurous and nutty to do it," says pilot Carlos Costa, "but there's nothing like saving a life."

He's right. And four days after our flight, in the safety of Miami's Catholic Relief Services office, we finally meet our rescuees. Their faces are still sunburned, their hands still blistered from rowing. One is a bright-eyed 37-year-old plumber by the name of Sergio Fidel Castro Hernandez. He and five friends had slipped away after dark from a Havana beach in their little vessel made of six bus tires. For two days, they rowed and drifted in the Gulf Stream without food or water. On the second day, shortly before the rescue, they spotted another group of balseros. Odalis Peres Lopez, a 27-year-old housewife, was on that second raft. She recalls yelling and crying with joy as Domaniewicz circled above. "When we saw that plane," she says, "we knew we were in the land of freedom." In tribute to same, Castro plans to drop the "Fidel" from his name.