Pilots were heroes, sons and brothers

The last time she heard his voice was at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 23, 1996. Again, Carlos was in rare form. On a three-way call, she invited him and a friend to come by her house for dinner.

No thanks, Carlos told her. He was in the mood for real food, he joked, not for her standard take-out pizza or Chinese. She hung up the phone laughing.

The next morning, he piloted one of the two Brothers to the Rescue Cessnas shot down by Cuban MiGs inside international air space. It was the day he and three other young men from South Florida -- Armando Alejandre Jr., 45, Mario de la Peña, 24, and Pablo Morales, 29 -- would become unlikely martyrs, the day his sister Mirta and her fellow survivors would become unlikely human rights activists.

Mirta wants to remember the quirky, heartwarming scenes that are not inscribed on any memorial, the things you don't tell the United Nations, the things that have no place in a federal trial against the Cuban government.

In the greater context of how Carlos Costa was killed, there seems to be no room for the particulars of his life, his scrupulous habits, his discipline, his dreams. She felt so much pride, for instance, when she learned he had paid all his bills. But who do you tell that to when it always seems more important to outline the horrible sequence of Feb. 24 again and again?

Her brother was your regular Miami Beach-born kid, a 29-year-old pilot earning flight hours on volunteer search missions over the Florida Straits.

``Back in 1989 we were on a cruise and our ship picked up four rafters, and he got really impressed by this and he couldn't believe people would leave Cuba like that. He told us he thought he saw himself in the refugees,'' the sister recalls. ``This is what inspired him. He wasn't involved in Cuban politics. He just wanted to save lives.''

But his murder would carry the echoes of Cuba's political extremism. He may have been a regular South Florida guy on a humanitarian flight, but to the Cuban regime he was a political target.

His death plunged Mirta into the world of human rights advocacy. The relatives of the other fliers became her family. When she met Maggie Alejandre Khuly, who had also lost her younger brother, Armando Alejandre, in the MiG attack, it was as if she had known her all her life.

The relatives forged a formidable alliance that has pressed relentlessly for criminal indictments against Cuba. Their advocacy bloc has taken that message to Congress, to the United Nations in New York, to Geneva, where the U.N. Human Rights Commission cited the murders in a resolution condemning Cuba, and to federal court, where a judge awarded them $187.6 million in damages.

Ask any of them about their activism and they're likely to begin the response with ``Well, we . . .''

On Tuesday, they prayed together at several memorial services across Miami. When I called Mirta to tell her I was writing this column, she had just one request: ``Please, it must be about all of the four, not just my brother. They all died together.''

And there is a kind of symmetry in their stories, in the way they have had to mourn their loved ones not only as brothers and sons, but also as martyrs and community figures.

``We drive out of our house each morning, take a left at the light, and I see his name,'' says Maggie Alejandre Khuly, a Miami architect.

The stretch of Southwest 72nd Avenue, from Bird Road to Sunset Drive, has been renamed after her brother, Armando.

``In a way, I always knew my brother was larger than life,'' she says. ``Sometimes I see him recreated in somebody else's image, a more political image that doesn't agree with my idea of him. He doesn't seem to be a human being any longer. But you know, always, a brother is a brother.''

And a son is a son. One father, Mario de la Peña, recalls his family's life before the tragedy. ``Mario was 24. He was born in Hudson County, N.J. We moved here in 1980, right in the middle of the Mariel boatlift. He was 12. . . . He was impacted by what he saw during that time. . . . When he told us he wanted to fly for Brothers, I was surprised, but I had to agree. He had a passion for flying.''

For the relatives, the vigil is not over. The flame will be kept alive, they say, until Cuba is held responsible for the murders.

``I made a promise that I wasn't going to stop working at this until I saw justice,'' Mirta Costa Mendez says. ``I can't let his life be thrown out like that.''

Carlos Costa was her brother, her only brother, her favorite brother.