BY FRANCES ROBLES

  PANAMA CITY, Panama - The 75-year-old alleged Cuban terrorist may have come to the end of his road: a comfortable tropical jail with a lovely view of the Panama Canal.

  Luis Posada Carriles, accused of fighting President Fidel Castro with bombs and bullets for 40 years, has lost 20 pounds, gotten skin cancer and still mumbles from the time most his tongue was shot off years ago. His career as CIA operative, accused bomber and fugitive ended three years ago, when he was arrested here on charges of plotting to kill Castro.

  On Wednesday a judge began a three-day hearing that may decide the fate of Cuba's most wanted man, plus three other Cuban exiles, on lesser charges of possession of explosives and illicit association. Posada is also charged with entering Panama in 2000 using false documents.

  A hearing in December ended after just hours when leftist activists filed an injunction seeking a reinstatement of the murder charges. The motion failed. Now the defense is hoping the current hearing will be converted into a full-fledged trial.

  ''My old tired heart has made enough rounds,'' Posada said in an interview with The Herald on Monday at Panama's El Renacer prison. ``I'm going to eat my steak, drink my wine and struggle for my country. That will be my life's end.''

  Depending on the outcome of this hearing, he could be sentenced to a seven-year prison sentence on the explosives charge, or he could be released, credited with time
  served. If he is released, he said, he plans to disappear.

  He is best known for his alleged involvement in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73, including a Cuban fencing team. He also claimed (and later denied)
  responsibility for the 1997 string of Havana hotel bombings, and he has been accused but never convicted of masterminding several conspiracies to kill Castro. The Cuban government press even pins John F. Kennedy's murder on him.

  And here he is just outside Havana's reach, nicely dressed, sitting under a tree on the grounds of the penitentiary on the shores of the canal, with co-defendant Pedro
  Remón, a Miami salesman.

  THEIR VERSION

  They want to tell their version of how they landed in prison. They act married.

  Posada makes jokes that Remón winces at. Remón finishes Posada's sentences, reminding his 40-year friend what he meant to say.

  ''Look, we're not Saint Francis of Assisi,'' said Remón, once convicted of conspiracy in the machine-gun murder of a Cuban diplomat at the United Nations, who died in front of his son. ``I'm just saying all these charges they say about us are not true. We are freedom fighters.''

  Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985 while prosecutors appealed his acquittal on the 1976 airliner bombing, and later lived underground in El Salvador,
  painting and allegedly hatching various conspiracies to hunt down his No. 1 enemy. Cuba and Venezuela have filed motions for extradition; both have been rejected.

  In mid-2000, someone using a secret code phrase -- ''Without country but without lord'' -- telephoned him, reporting that Cuban Intelligence Directorate Chief Gen.
  Eduardo Delgado wanted to defect. But he would do so only if Posada was there to guarantee his safety.

  ''How many people have defected from Cuba? They didn't need four or five people to help them, '' said a Cuban government official monitoring this week's hearing.

  The plan was hatched to pick up Delgado at the Ibero-American Summit that November in Panama City. Helping Posada were to be Remón; Gaspar Jiménez, a Miamian who served time for the attempted kidnapping and murder of Cuban diplomats in Mexico, and Guillermo Novo, whose conviction in the 1976 murder of a Chilean diplomat in Washington was overturned on appeal.

  ''All of these men at one point or another were part of the terrorist establishment in Miami,'' said former Miami prosecutor Alberto Milián, whose father Emilio lost his legs in a car bombing initially linked to Jiménez.

  SURPRISE

  The four men were in Panama when Castro landed in the capital and made a stunning announcement: Cuba's most wanted man was in town in a plot to kill him.
  Panamanian police arrested the four, and later found a bag with 33 pounds of explosives that allegedly belonged to them.

  Posada now insists he has never set any bombs and denounces terrorism. He has killed, he said, but only when both sides were armed. He denies reports from the late
  1990s that he admitted to The Herald and The New York Times that he masterminded the string of Havana bombings, which killed an Italian-born tourist from Canada.

  A Salvadoran man jailed in Cuba has identified Posada as the man who prepared the bombs and paid him to set them off. Other evidence gathered independently by The Herald also linked Posada to the Havana bombings.

  ''I think I did what I had to do,'' Posada said. ``I'm doing what I have to do as a Cuban patriot.''

  Remón added, ''No innocent person was ever killed'' by anti-Castro groups. He didn't mention the Italian.

  Asked if he would kill Castro if he had the chance, Posada said sure.

  ''Just like if there was a roach there, I would stomp on it,'' Posada said, acting it out with his black dress shoes. ``I'm old, but so is Castro. Castro is going down, we're
  heading up and we can help push him down a bit.''