By Al Burt
Herald Latin America Editor

The incredible scatter-gun battle against Cuba by small bands of war-bent revolutionaries crescendoed Sunday after a sea clash that sank a Cuban patrol boat and brought two wounded prisoners to Miami.

Six rebels in a 22-foot boat with a 90 horsepower inboard engine, slipping into Cardenas Bay on the north coast of Cuba to blow up Arrechabella Distillery there, ran unexpectedly upon a patrol boat about the same size as their own.

They exchanged fire. The rebels' 20 millimeter cannon came out best. The Cuban boat sank. Two men aboard swam away in the dark. The rebels fished the other two out of the water and took them prisoner.

The revolutionary boat then limped to Cay Sal, a tiny British Bahamas isle some 30 miles to the north, where an official wired the U.S. Coast Guard for help.

A Coast Guard plane flew the two prisoners, 40-year-old militia Sgt. Filiberto Suarez Lima and Corporal Miguel Cao Mandina, to Jackson Memorial Hospital here. Both had upper leg wounds.

Suarez Lima asked for political asylum, federal officials said.

A Coast Guard boat went to Cay Sal to pick up the six rebels. They reportedly were en route to Key West Sunday night.

Both prisoners confirmed the incident, and the Cuban Armed Forces issued this communique:

"At approximately 2 a.m. the morning of the 13th, a dark gray pirate launch of the PT-type opened fire with .30 caliber machine guns on a pleasure craft crewed by four Cuban citizens near Cayo Blanco some 23 kilometers northeast of the city of Cardenas, Matanzas Province.

"Of the four persons cowardly attacked by the pirate vessel, two returned to report that their companions apparently perished as victims of the criminal attack, and said the enemy boat fled rapidly to the north.

"The Revolutionary Armed Forces Ministry denounces once again these constant aggressions of which North American imperialism makes our nation the target."

The prisoners refuted the pleasure craft story, admitting they were on their regular patrol in the Cardenas Varadero Beach area.

The attack was made by six men -- led by Roberto Parson and Manolo Quiza -- who belong to an exile group without a name. With them were Manolo Casanova, a free-lance photographer, Eddie Moore, a Cuban, Juan Espinoza and Jorge Rodriguez.

"We are just free Cubans who want to fight," said a Miami spokesman for the group, Antonio Bustillo. "We are just friends, and we got together, about 50 of us."

Bustillo said they had planned to blow up a distillery near Cardenas. The six attackers carried Belgian machine guns, bazookas, the 20 millimeter cannon, and hand grenades.

The plan was for four men to carry the 20 millimeter ashore as their main weapon in an operation timed to take 20 minutes.

When the patrol boat showed up the plan was junked and they made a fight of it.

"It was not a pleasure boat as Cuba said. One time it had been a pleasure boat owned by a wealthy Cuban, but it had been converted with arms for use on patrol," Bustillo said.

The six men left from a base outside U.S. territory several days ago, according to Marino Martinez and Carlos Zarraga, members of the group.

A small boat was used because the coast is well guarded ad it had a better chance of slipping through the radar net, they said.

Their operations base has supplies and equipment, including gasoline, arms and munitions, boats and even anti-tank guns, they claimed.

Bustillo also said this raid, planned for more than a month, was not the first raid they had carried out, although it was the first that has drawn any attention.

"We just didn't think about talking of it," he said. "Now we're thinking to give it to the public because we need more cooperation so we can do another thing better."

Members of the group here said they had carried out these two previous operations:

On May 20, a strike on Varadero Beach itself: "We went ashore and started shooting them (with Belgian machine guns). We killed three and got away. Six men went along, and two went ashore and killed some men who patrol on the beach."

Early in August, an attack on a fishing boat: "Fidel says they are fishing, but they have machine guns on them. Near Cardenas, we fought the boat and pulled alongside. But they sank our boat, so we jumped on theirs and captured it. The name on it was the Cima 8. There were five men on this raid, and they put the Cubans overboard. They brought the boat into Key West, and the authorities took it."

This was the fifth reported attack on Cuban ships or shores recently by the scatter-gun bands of rebels.

The first was in July, in which three Cuban sailors aboard a gunboat were killed in a duel with a mystery ship which the Montecristi counter-revolutionary organization of Miami claimed it owned.

A second, and probably the one which drew the most attention, was by the Student Revolutionary Directorate whose raiders struck at a hotel on the outskirts of Havana where Soviet technicians were staying.

Both the third and the fourth were by Alpha 66, a non-political group with a military plan. An Alpha boat first attacked two Cuban vessels and one British vessel near the port of Caibarien on the north coast. Havana Radio confirmed this one.

Last week, Alpha reported a raid on the north coast port of Isabela de Sagua, where it claimed to have killed "20 of the enemy," blown up a railroad station and a military supply warehouse. This was not confirmed.

In Miami, report of the Saturday attack created some confusion before identity of the raiders was confirmed.

An Alpha 66 spokesman, for example, admitted: "I don't think that is our raid. I know we have something soon, but I don't think that's it."

A spokesman for the Student Directorate said the raid was not theirs but could not identify it, "It is hard to say. There are so many planning actions."