Exiles: Slaughter on the Seven Seas

Through the 90-mile-wide Straits of Florida separating the U.S. from Cuba runs some of the most bizarre traffic ever seen on any body of water in the world. Desperate Cubans flee north in sailboats, rafts—even inner tubes. At night, weird vessels churn among the mangrove and coral cays on secret missions for no one is quite sure whom. One morning last week, a U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat 65 miles off Cuba drew alongside one of the strangest yet: an aged, 165-ft., grey-hulled converted yacht named the Seven Seas, adrift and seemingly...

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