Ten exiles in two fast boats planned a raid on a major Cuban target early this month, ran into trouble and lost both boats; But they escaped to Florida anyway with two militiamen as prisoners. Here is their amazing story, as told by on of them, just released by U.S. immigration authorities.

If Fidel Castro had not decided to go fishing near Varadero Beach about the time of our raid, we could have delivered a major blow to the Cuban economy. But he went fishing, and there was a 110-foot navy frigate hanging around to help him.

So we missed our big target when the frigate got after us, but we still killed two militiamen and brought two others back as prisoners.

We left our base June 7, and at 5 the next morning we were in the waters just off the city of Matanzas. Out main objective, the multimillion dollar Arechabala Refinery, was about two miles east.

First, we went ashore at a secret place to check out information and plans. For three days, we did nothing but send messages and make contact with our friends from the base.

When we became worried about security and moved the base to Cayo Blanco, we ran into the first of a series of troubles. Cayo Blanco is a mile and one-half off the coast at the tip end of Varalero Beach. We got within 100 meters of the cayo (it's a big one, maybe a mile long) when that frigate came up on us about dawn. Our small boats, 17 feet and 22 feet, were faster, and we made it to the cayo. But they saw us.

We knew we had to move fast, so we changed our plan to make the attack right away, but se still had to wait for the cover of night. One of our men climbed a pine tree as a lookout.

The rest of us talked and smoked and went over the plans. Pretty soon the man in the pine tree called down frantically, "The frigate is back; the frigate is back." I never saw his eyes look so big.

It moved up to the cayo, maybe 150 meters away, and we could see the name on her side Las Villas No. 57."

While we watched, a small outboard, with four heavily armed men put away from the frigate and moved towards us. First, we started to fire on them, but then decided it would be better if we waited on them to come ashore.

We let them come in, out of sight of the frigate, and the we jumped them and told them to drop their weapons. But they dropped to the ground and one of them fired two rounds from his submachinegun at us. So we had to kill two of them. We captured the other two.

There was nothing left to do then but try to hit our target in the daylight. We jumped in the boats and moved out at top speed.

Then one boat hit a sandbar and stuck. Manolo Oraza, the skipper and our leader could not get it loose. The rest of us jumped over the side and began pushing and shoving but it did not do any good.

The water pump began taking mud and the engine made an infernal noise and then choked off. It began to shoot out flames, and I thought we were lost.

The frigate was coming after us, and by now was close enough to open fire with four-inch shells. They were lousy shots, but they were getting closer and we knew they couldn't keep missing.

Desperately, one of us fired a shot without looking and shot one of our own men, Evangelio Rufin in the back and he fell in the water.

"We can't let them capture us," someone shouted.

We made a last shove at the boat, then gave up and everyone jumped on the 17-footer but we soon realized it couldn't handle all of us. Almost without thinking, we made a drastic decision: to scuttle both boats and hide in the swamps of the cayo.

For half an hour, we made our way into the worst part of the swamps, not knowing where we were going, but just trying to get away from that frigate.

Finally we came to a little canal, and there was an old man fishing in an 18-foot boat. He first thought we were a militia patrol and was scared, but we explained the situation and asked his help.

"I don't have enough gasoline," he said, but we stuck a rifle in his stomach, he decided that maybe he did have enough. When we jumped into the boat with the two militiamen, it almost sank from the load.

The canal came out at the other end of the cayo. We laid on the deck and covered ourselves with the sail to keep from being seen, but the frigate was nowhere in sight. Three Castro planes were circling the area by then, but the canvas cover fooled them.

A half hour later, we approached another fishing boat, a 36-footer from the Cardenas Fishing Cooperative. The old man went up close and asked for gasoline. But the captain spotted us quickly, and reacted by saying:

"I've wanted to get away from this island a long time. I will go with you to Florida."

So we all piled in the bigger boat, and let the old man go his own way.

We headed for the Florida Keys, and nobody stopped us anywhere along the way. We pulled into Marathon about 1 p.m. June 12. Still nobody paid any attention to us.

One of us borrowed a telephone not far from the dock , and called the coast guard to come get us and to bring an ambulance for Rufin.

In five minutes, U.S. authorities has us in custody, and they took over our two prisoners and our friend the boat captain.