A man's voice crackled from the other side. He is an independent Cuban journalist with a lot of news to report. The Castro government's recent crackdown against its opponents alarmed dissidents and those struggling to work outside the official web.

The journalist predicted the harassment would intensify today, the third anniversary of Cuba's murderous attack on two unarmed Brothers' planes, killing four South Florida men.

``They've warned us not to observe the date,'' he said.

Basulto shook his head and came back with words of support. ``Proceed with caution. Keep up the struggle.''

But the journalist brought up the word that has come to symbolize both rebellion and surrender, the word that launched Basulto's refugee search planes in 1991 and its 2,000-plus missions: rafts.

``People are making rafts. People want to leave,'' he said.

To Basulto, whose plane dodged the MiG attack of Feb. 24, 1996, a new mass exodus translates to little more than ``escapism.''

``The rafts must stop leaving so internal change can happen in Cuba,'' he argued.

Three years after the killings, Basulto and his organization are flying into increasingly turbulent airspace. In recent months, Brothers has stepped up its push for civic resistance on the island. Basulto's office translates and circulates ``strategic plans'' for carrying out non-violent change.

The heightened militancy has bought Basulto a lot of controversy and sneers. How did he go from the consummate humanitarian to the quintessential militant?

Basulto argues that his struggle has not changed, only intensified. It began years ago when he dropped leaflets bearing the principles of Martin Luther King Jr. into Cuba. And it has sharpened into a full-fledged plan for ``national civic defiance.''

Rescuing rafters only addressed the symptoms of Cuba's ills. Exhorting social change targets the main disease.

``Our struggle has always been a very civic and patriotic one,'' Basulto rebuts when asked about his change of course. He points to a painting of his Cessna, bearing the number of the Bay of Pigs Brigade 2506 -- evidence of Brothers' militant roots. ``People see what they want to see. I guess I'm no longer the grandson of Mother Teresa.''

It is an entirely new struggle now, one that seems marked by lawsuits and controversies and angry soundbites. Everything except rafts. It is almost as if the details of that fateful February afternoon have taken on lives of their own, creating new, more obtuse plot twists.

The stoic profiles of the dead airmen have been immortalized in portraits and memorials. Their names grace Miami streets. The memory of their valor hovers apart from the tumultuous consequences of their deaths.

In the aftermath, Castro's regime threatens to cut off telephone service if the airmen's survivors are awarded damages from Cuba's frozen assets. Communication between millions of Cuban families teeters in the balance.

Each time around, there are new details, questions and complications. Potentially lost in the labyrinth is the essence, the reason flowers will be tossed over the Florida Straits at 3:21 p.m. today.

Four men on a humanitarian mission. They bore no arms, carried no violent agenda. Yet, they were murdered at sea, in international airspace.

Armando Alejandre Jr., 45.

Pablo Morales, 29.

Carlos Costa, 29.

Mario de la Pena, 24.

Nothing will ever change this. Nothing will ever erase the horror of this day.