By CAROL ROSENBERG
             Herald Staff Writer

             The scrap of intelligence came from Cuba in the morning. A border guard saw
             six people leaving the coast at 9 a.m. on a 10-foot wooden boat with an outboard
             motor -- and alerted U.S. authorities.

             So, just past noon, a U.S. Coast Guard jet carrying two pilots, two spotters and a
             radioman took off from its Opa-locka air base, swept west to the Everglades and
             streaked south to the Straits of Florida.

             ``Our best luck is going to be one of these freaking freighters running into them,''
             said Falcon pilot Lt. Bill Antonakis, scanning the shimmering 3- to 5-foot seas.

             This day's search turned up nothing. But it illustrates the day-in, day-out struggle --
             sometimes in collaboration with Cuba -- that the Coast Guard has engaged over
             the Straits since the Clinton administration changed course on Cuba policy as it
             grappled with the 1994 balsero crisis.

             Rather than rescue the Cuban boaters and help them safely to South Florida's
             shores, Coast Guard cutters are under orders to intercept Cuban migrants -- and,
             more often than not, return them to their homeland.

             Sometimes, like a week ago, they work with seemingly solid intelligence.

             The Coast Guard got the tip in a telex from their counterparts in Cuba, part of a
             sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly sharing of information on vessels that could
             be crossing between the two countries' territorial waters.

             ``Whether you like it or not, they are professional mariners. They are the Cuban
             coast guard,'' said Petty Officer Scott Carr, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman.
             ``We interact with them on a professional basis from time to time.''

             Other times, the five-member Falcon crews carry out routine law enforcement
             missions, swooping down low to inspect boats plying the Straits. They also say the
             flights send a message of deterrence.

             ``Our orders are to go out there and locate migrant vessels so our cutters can
             interdict them -- that's what we've always been doing,'' said Lt. Robert ``R.J.''
             Holthaus, another Falcon pilot who has been working the Straits for six years.

             Before the tip came in from Cuba, Holthaus led another Falcon team on an
             untargeted sweep that hugged the Miami Beach shoreline and went as far south as
             the Cay Sal Banks, where rafters have washed up on the desolate Dog Rocks.

             As his mission ended, Antonakis' crew went wheels up with the Cuban
             intelligence. They spent more than two hours staring out 2-foot-tall windows,
             systematically scanning the 900-square-mile search zone, monitoring radar and
             radio transmissions -- only to turn home without a clue to the fate of the would-be
             migrants.

             ``It's a really rough day that this guy decides to take these people out. Very gutsy,''
             said Lt. Damon Bentley, Antonakis' co-pilot, scanning the whitecaps before they
             gave up the search.

             Coast Guard spokesmen wouldn't speculate on what might have happened to the
             boat. Perhaps the vessel made it to shore and is now safe in South Florida with
             family or friends. Perhaps the boat was lost, its passengers dead like the two
             Dominicans found dehydrated in a boat by another Coast Guard vessel two weeks
             earlier.

             Perhaps they returned to Cuba, to risk the seas another day.

             ``Each influx has its own personality,'' said Holthaus, who has spent six years
             searching the Straits as a Coast Guard pilot. ``Several years ago you were seeing
             more rafts -- 15-20 foot wooden vessels with small outboard engines aboard and
             15 people. That was the typical profile.''

             These days the Coast Guard is watching for fast boats that blend in among the
             fishing parties and other pleasure boaters, part of a more sophisticated smuggling
             trade that emerged with the rafter-interdiction policy.

             ``Usually they're heading due north and hauling butt. We get a Coast Guard cutter
             to try to intercept them,'' Holthaus said.

             High overhead you can spot the fast boats by their straight, white wake, he said.
             Coast Guard statistics don't count how many would-be migrants were intercepted
             by air assets.

             Different role

             But they do show that all Coast Guard operations have intercepted 2,641 Cubans
             and 4,720 Haitians since January 1995. That includes 47 Cubans and three
             Haitians found at sea so far this month.

             In the old days, when the Coast Guard saw themselves as heroes saving lives,
             working in tandem with the Brothers to the Rescue search-and-rescue
             organization, reporters and photographers were welcome aboard the cutters.

             Now that they are instruments of a new foreign policy the only access outsiders get
             to Coast Guard missions is high overhead -- from the jump seat of a Falcon.

             Coast Guard spokesman Marcus Woodring said that's because under the policy
             of interdiction -- which has immigration service officers conducting shipboard
             interviews with rafters -- the State and Justice Departments forbid observers, both
             journalists and lawyers for fear they will intrude on would-be migrants' privacy.

             Emotional duty at times

             Yet, even at this height, hundreds of feet above the water, it can be an emotional
             duty.

             ``People are looking for a better place for their families; I personally wish the law
             would be different,'' said Petty Officer Douglas Brooks, a radio/radar operator
             with 19 years Coast Guard aviation experience.

             ``But you do feel good when you help the people that really aren't capable of
             making the journey,'' he said.

             Petty Officer Kevin Markowitz, one Falcon spotter, said he does his duty, and
             diligently. But, privately, he admits, ``If they are out there, I hope they make it.
             And if I find them, I still hope they make it'' to the ``freedom'' of U.S. soil, where
             Cubans can eventually get immigration privileges.

             His grandparents came to Miami from Cuba's Oriente province, he said. So as he
             sees U.S. policy, ``It's not like we're helping them; it's the rules.''