VELJI DOL, Croatia - Using flashlights to see through darkness and sheets of rain, Croatian and U.S. rescue teams today reached the wreckage of a plane carrying U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown.

They found at least four bodies, and, according to a local doctor, one survivor.

Reporters at the scene could see the plane resting on its belly on the top a small hill in this coastal Adriatic village near the port city of Dubrovnik. The plane's middle appeared to have burned.

Dr. Mladen Miovic of Dubrovnik hospital said a helicopter belonging to the NATO-led peace mission in Bosnia evacuated the survivor shortly before 11 p.m., flying through heavy rains and high winds.

There was no information on the survivor's identity or condition.

Brown, 54, had been traveling in the region with about a dozen top American executives exploring business possibilities in the Balkans. Pentagon officials in Washington said that 27 passengers and a crew of six had been aboard the flight to Dubrovnik.

Police sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, and Croatia's official HINA news agency said the bodies of four people from Brown's military plane had been found.

Villagers said the storm, with heavy rain and high winds, was one of the worst of the century. Helicopter searches ended because of heavy fog, but more than 100 special police had made their way to the hill, known locally as Sveti Ivan - or St. John.

Maj. Bryan Holt of U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, said a U.S. search-and-rescue team had also reached the wreckage, about an hour's walk from the village.

Ivo Djuricic, a 53-year-old villager who was nearby at the time of the crash, said he saw the plane flying, heard a crash and then jumped into a car and raced to the village to call police.

''I saw the plane standing there,'' he said. ''And I saw no signs of life.''

The aircraft disappeared from radar screens at 2:52 p.m. (7:52 a.m. EST) between the tiny island of Kalamota, a few miles southwest of Dubrovnik, and the Cilipi airport, Croatian security sources said. Visibility in the area was no more than 100 yards, they said.

Brown was traveling in a T-43, the military version of a Boeing 737.

He left for Dubrovnik yesterday from Tuzla, the town in northeastern Bosnia where U.S. troops with the NATO-led peace force are based.

The HINA news agency said Prime Minister Zlatko Matesa of Croatia and U.S. Ambassador Peter Galbraith, who had been in Dubrovnik to welcome Brown, were touring the crash site, where the bodies were found.

Officials said the plane approached the airport from Kalamota.

Its path to Dubrovnik took it over Zupski Bay, and it apparently crashed into the hill as it crossed over land on the south side of the bay.