Deep Black

Book 0: Nick Stone

by Andy McNab

Genres: Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Nick Stone's future has never looked as bleak. The only person he's ever loved is dead. The only people who might give him a reason not to join her have turned their backs. Until a chance encounter with a man he saved ten years ago appears to throw him a lifeline...

But on the bullet — and bomb — scarred streets of Baghdad, second chances are in short supply. A simple quest becomes a journey to the heart of a chilling conspiracy; too late, he realizes that he is being used as bait — to lure into the open a man he believes can offer some salvation, but whom the darker forces of the West will stop at nothing to destroy...

From its violent and shocking opening in the Muslim enclaves of Bosnia, through vivid, lightning-paced action in war-torn Iraq, this unforgettable story proves Andy McNab yet again to be the master of the modern thriller, a writer at the very top of his game.

Release date: January 1, 2004

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 514

Sample

1



Bosnia, October 1994



From where I was hiding, the bottom of the valley looked like no man’s land on the Somme: acres of mud churned up by tank and heavy vehicle tracks, mortar craters filled with dirty water. Here and there a dead hand clawed at the sky, pleading for help that had never arrived.

It was a grey and miserable day, not yet freezing, but plenty cold enough to have robbed me of a whole lot of body heat over the last three days. Even so I was still luckier than the scattered corpses, half buried in the mud. Judging by their state of decomposition, some had been there since the summer.

I was about a hundred Ks north of Sarajevo, dug into the treeline at the base of a mountain. My hide looked across the valley to what had once been a cement works, precisely 217 metres away. The problem for the owners was that it had been a Muslim cement works. The perimeter fence had long since been flattened by Serb tanks, and not a single part of the complex had been left unscarred by the bitter fighting. Most of it had been reduced to rubble. A three-storey building that I guessed had once been a block of offices was just about standing, heavily pitted by artillery and small-arm rounds. Black scorch marks framed the holes where there’d once been windows.

I’d counted maybe thirty or forty Serb troops through my miniature binoculars, and I could see they were as cold and pissed-off as I was. Smoke billowed from an annexe, mixing with the occasional burst of diesel exhaust; one or two of Mladic’s boys were starting the vehicles, so they could get warm inside the cab.

I could only guess that, like me, they were waiting for the general’s arrival. Ratko Mladic, the commander-in-chief of the Bosnian Serb Army, had been supposed to show up the day before, but that hadn’t happened. Fuck knows why. Sarajevo had just told me to wait where I was, and that was what I’d do until they told me to lift off the target.

I was up to my ears in a Gore-Tex sniper suit, a big, bulky overall with a camouflaged outer and a duvet-type lining. It had kept me warm for the first few hours, but prolonged contact with the ground was steadily draining me. I had about two days’ food left, but being so close to the target, I was on hard routine. I couldn’t heat up food, or make a brew. Still, at least I was dry.

I raised the binos and scanned the ground again, controlling my breathing. It wouldn’t take much of a vapour trail for someone to think I was having a cookout.

The coffin-shaped scrape I’d dug after moving covertly into the area was about two feet deep and covered with camouflage netting. I adjusted it again to make sure the objective lens at the front end of the LTD [laser target designator] had a clear field of view to the factory. When Mladic arrived to do whatever he was going to do in the middle of nowhere, I’d call it in. The Firm, getting shelled to shit by the Serbs back in Sarajevo, would green-light a fast jet loaded with a 2000-pound Paveway laser-guided bomb. About fifteen or twenty minutes later, depending on how long it took the platform, as we said in the trade, to deliver, there’d be a top-level vacancy in the Serb high command.

After the hit, I’d get the fuck out as quick as I could. The Serbs weren’t fools; they knew these precision bomb strikes were man-in-the-loop technology and they’d be out looking for me.

Apart from the LTD and my daysack, everything from the sniper suit to the plastic bags of shit and petrol can of piss would stay in the hide. It wouldn’t matter if the Serbs unearthed it: this wasn’t the first time they’d been marked, and it wouldn’t be the last. They knew who was doing it, but would blame the Muslims anyway. I’d rather have left the LTD as well, but there was a difference between the Serbs knowing they were getting designated and being able to prove it.

After extracting myself from the immediate area, I’d just hit a road and become Nick Collins, freelance reporter, again. I carried a Sony Hi-8 video camera and a Nikon 35mm SLR in my daysack. On the way in to the job I’d mixed with the local population here and there to make sure I had plenty of shots. If I was caught, I wanted to look the part.

Nick Collins had an Irish passport for this job. Irish or Swiss, they’re the safest documents in the world. Who’s ever pissed off with Dublin or Berne? With a name like Collins but a London accent, I’d have to say I came from Kilburn. Dad just never got round to taking Brit nationality when he finished working for McAlpine in the early seventies.

Freelancers like me were two a penny out here. Young guys, and the occasional girl, trying to make their fortune with bang-bang pictures and footage that might be good enough to be syndicated round the world. I’d joined a cast of hundreds who’d booked an air ticket then headed to Dixons in search of a decent SLR camera and a few hundred rolls of film. Once in-country, they asked where all the chaos was and made for it like bees to a honeypot.

Shouts were coming from the factory. I raised my head slowly and squinted through the dull, grey light. A group of Serbs were playing football again to warm themselves up. They were in a ragbag of uniforms. Some had camouflage; some were in what looked like German army-surplus parkas. Some were wearing wellington boots with thick, knee-high socks folded over at the top; some had decent calf-height boots. I’d seen better dressed and better organized Serb troops; maybe these were the cooks and bottle-washers. Whatever, they had a new football today.

I’d watched as these guys killed two Bosnian ‘soldiers’ the morning before – an old man and a boy of about fifteen. They’d taken them into the factory. Judging by the screams, they’d probably interrogated them, then brought them outside and shot them in the chest. I thought it strange at the time; why not in the head? That was what normally happened. I found out why at afternoon kick-off.

The whole thing over here was a fuck-up from start to finish – if there ever was a finish. I thought about the young girl I’d met a few days before, shivering at the roadside with a much older woman. She spoke a bit of English, so I asked their permission to take some photographs to fill up another roll of thirty-six for my cover story. She smiled shyly and told me her name.

‘Where you going, Zina?’

She shivered again and motioned down the road. ‘Sarajevo.’

What could I say? She was jumping out of the frying-pan and into the fire. The Serbs had had the place under siege for over two years. As well as constant sniper fire, they were lobbing about four thousand mortar and artillery shells into the city every day. The UNPROFOR troops who controlled the airport had their hands tied. About the only thing they could do was fly in aid for the half-million or so Sarajevans who were trapped. Thousands had been killed, but maybe this lot would be among the handful who made it through the Serb front line and into somebody’s basement. I hoped so. If we both got to the city I might get my jacket back.

Even in this fucked-up place, some situations were more fucked-up than others. The old woman had been wearing a once-pink anorak many sizes too small for her. Her face was barely visible under the hood’s fringe of white nylon fur, but I could see in her eyes that she was dying.

‘Here.’ I was still several Ks short of the cache – where the LTD and all the other kit I’d need had been dug in by the Regiment as soon as the cement works became a possible target – but I couldn’t just leave the young girl like that. I took off my red ski jacket and gloves and handed them over.

She thanked me. Then, as if she had forgotten her plight for a few seconds, she struck a pose, right shoulder towards me, head flicked to the side as she zipped up her new jacket. ‘Kate Moss, no?’

I brought the camera up to my eye but I couldn’t bring myself to press the shutter release. Tears were suddenly streaming from very clear brown eyes and down her face. She was already back in the real world.



10



I kept very still in case they were watching her, ready to take another pop. But I had to get my head up. The target had to be splashed. I raised my head millimetre by millimetre, and looked over the lip of the shell scrape.

Zina’s blood had stopped steaming in front of me and was already congealing in the mud. Her leg was still blocking the line of sight of the LTD.

The Serbs’ attention was back on the three surviving girls, two on the third floor and one still outside. Now was my chance.

I crawled out of the rear of the hide as the cries of anguish and despair continued from the top window. Taking care not to disturb the cam net, I inched forward to the left of the hide. Camouflage wasn’t a problem: the sniper suit was already caked with mud.

After five feet of crawling I was able to reach Zina’s leg with an outstretched hand and pull it towards me. Her skin was still warm. I had to be careful now: too much movement and one of Mladic’s boys might notice a difference in the body’s position, even if it seemed they had other things on their minds.

I crawled back into the hide and checked the viewfinder. The LTD had a clear line of sight once again on to the target.

The exertion had warmed me a little, but now I was static again the cold renewed its attack. I picked up the binos.

The last girl was being dragged into the building. Mladic stood in the doorway, his ugly fat face creased in a grin. I longed to plant a high-velocity round right in the middle of his greasy forehead. After a while he turned and went back inside. Maybe it was time to push his way to the front of the queue.

There was nothing I could do but wait as the girls’ screams and sobs rattled around the building. What the fuck was happening? Where the fuck was that platform?

I checked the viewfinder once more, but I had a sinking feeling deep in my guts. Who was I trying to kid? The strike wasn’t going to happen. Mladic and the rest of his bastards were going to get away with this. And they were going to live to do it another day.

Zina’s eyes stared back at me. They were no longer clear and bright, just vacant and drab like everything else around her.

Fuck the Firm, fuck Mladic. I should have called in the Paveway as soon as she’d turned up.



99



I held my breath and leaned forward, eyes closed, head tilted. All I could hear was Jerry breathing to my left.

Then there it was again, metal on metal.

I turned back to Jerry and pulled him slowly into the treeline. Fuck the mines. The target’s people were under the canopy the other side of the track, so that was obviously secure. If they hadn’t cleared this side, we’d soon get to know about it. If it was going to happen, it was going to happen. Maybe some of that fatalism shit had rubbed off on me after all.

I kept a grip on Jerry’s sleeve. Even a few metres’ separation could mean we lost each other, and it wasn’t as if we could just call out to regroup. Now was the time to slow down.

It’s so easy to lose any sense of direction in pitch dark, but I got a good marker from the occasional clank and snatch of conversation the other side of the track, which became clearer the closer we got. With luck we were going to hit the edge of the treeline soon, and there’d be a short stretch of open ground, then the wall.

I felt my way along, waving my left hand in front of me for obstructions, the right still holding the weapon. Jerry’s hand gripped the butt to keep contact.

I stopped when a branch blocked my way, took a few paces back or sideways, tried to move round the obstacle and not make noise. Now that I’d slowed, I was more aware of the scratches to my face. My salty sweat made them as painful as wasp stings. My sockless feet had blistered in my boots. My whole body felt as if it was boiling under all the layers.

I stayed focused, trying to keep my sense of direction. An engine started up to our left. I guessed it must be further up the track, the other side of the hedgehogs. I hoped it didn’t move. If it did, and up towards the house, I’d have to assume it was going to pick up the target. I’d have to get out of the trees and take it on. There’d be a gang-fuck with so many bodies about, and only nineteen rounds.

We came to the edge of the forestry block. I dropped to my knees and crawled the last two metres on my own. After the inky blackness of the canopy, the stars seemed as bright as the sun.

The wall facing me was the one running along the right-hand side of the compound as viewed from the track. The door into the family courtyard was about forty metres down it. Beyond the wall I could catch just the odd glimpse of terracotta rooftop. The three- or four-metre strip of rough grass between the wall and the treeline was white with frost. No vehicles or bodies had been along it tonight.

Somebody near the checkpoint had a bout of coughing. Maybe it was the exhaust fumes. The engine was still on, but the vehicle was stationary.

I moved back to grab Jerry, and together we followed the edge of the trees away from the checkpoint, towards the family entrance. We came level, and I inched forward.

I looked left. No movement from the checkpoint. Vehicle still stationary.

I moved over the grass, leaving sign in the frost. There was no gap between the doors, but maybe an inch and a half beneath them. I got down on my knees, then lay flat on the ground. The grass was icy against my cheek. I couldn’t see any light or movement at ground level. There wasn’t the perspective to see any higher up.

I got back on my feet and gave the doors a gentle push where they joined, just in case they were unlocked. As if.

I moved back to Jerry and knelt down next to him. We stayed like that, just inches apart, as I got out the Thuraya and powered it up, one hand cupped over the display.



100



I crawled forward a couple of metres, got a signal, and pressed Send on the new number. There was only one ring before the monotone answered.

I talked normally, but kept my voice low. ‘It’s Nick. Get a fix: what’s the time to target?’

Monotone came back, ‘Eleven minutes, twenty-two seconds to target.’

Slowly and, I hoped, clearly, I began to explain the set-up of the house to him as if he was walking through the guest doors – the guest courtyard with its one-storey building dead ahead, and two-storey guest accommodation to the left, with the passageway into the family compound where the buildings met.

I checked after each detail with ‘Roger so far?’ I got back, ‘Affirmative,’ each time.

‘The target’s last location was the far right corner of the long building in the family courtyard. Roger so far?’

‘Affirmative. We have a fix on you. I repeat, we have a fix.’

‘Roger that. Wait out for the fire-control order: I do not have a target yet. This is not a weapons-free zone. You understand?’

There was a second or two’s pause. Then, ‘Affirmative.’

‘Roger that. Wait out.’

I kept the Thuraya switched on. I wanted to be able to pull it out, get a satellite, and start talking the moment we had the target. Until then, I didn’t want some colonel, or whoever was watching the screens in the operations room and making decisions, to go and hit whatever he saw on the other side of the wall because he was flapping about fucking up.

We needed to be well away from here when the Hellfires came calling. The target had to die. There was no margin for error.

The operators in the AWACS would be watching their screens, running checks on the Predators’ surveillance packages as Bosnia passed beneath them. The forward-looking infrared would be giving the operators a green negative of the landscape. Thermal imagers aboard the UAVs would be homing in on heat: the hotter the source, the whiter the image. Bodies would be picked out easily, even through the canopy. Just as important would be the LTD in the nose, and the feedback saying that the Hellfires were online and ready to go.

I crawled back to Jerry. ‘Listen, they’re here in about ten. The doors are locked. I need you to get over the wall and open them. I’ve got to stay this side. If that wagon comes to pick him up at the other doors, I’ll need to get down there with the G3.’

He started getting to his feet. I grabbed him. ‘When you get to the other side, you might not be able to open it, you realize that? It might be padlocked and then you’re in the shit unless you can get back over. You understand what I’m telling you?’

There was no point bullshitting him. We’d come too far now and he needed to know.

He put a hand firmly on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. ‘I’m already in the shit.’

He let go and started rummaging in his parka. ‘I think I’d better split these up.’ He handed me one of the cameras. ‘Just in case. It’ll make a little money for Renee. She’s with Chloë, at her mother’s in Detroit.’

I shoved it into my pocket.

‘She’s staying there until I get back from Brazil. You’ll find her. Give it to her. She’ll know what to do with it.’

We both started across the grass. I laid the G3 on the ground and got my back against the wall, eyes straining down to the right, towards the checkpoint. The wagon’s engine still turned over in the darkness.

I bent my legs and cupped my hands between my thighs. Jerry stepped back a little, positioned his right foot in them as a launch pad, and jumped up. I kept contact with his foot, twisting myself round towards the wall and pushing myself up until it was past my face. Then I held it against the wall so he had something to push against. He hooked his arms over the top, and seemed to stay like that for ages. I didn’t know if he was flapping, didn’t have the strength to get the rest of his body over, or had spotted something.

A few seconds later, he started to scramble over the wall and his foot left my hands.

I picked up the G3 and put my ear against the door just as he landed with a bump the other side. Almost immediately, there was the gentle groan of metal being drawn across metal.

The door opened very, very slowly. I let Jerry do it: he was in control.

As I slipped through and into the courtyard, Jerry closed it again behind me. He didn’t bolt it.

To my right, ten or eleven metres away, was the room where we’d last seen the target. The lamps were still burning.

Somewhere in the darkness, cooking pans clanged. To my left was the one-storey building separating the two courtyards. There were no windows this side of it. The first floor of the guest block, where we had showered, was completely dark.

I got the butt into the shoulder, flicked the safety on to single-shot, and positioned my trigger finger along the guard. Keeping Jerry behind me, I started to move towards the illuminated window. There was going to be nothing covert about this: there wasn’t enough time. I had no option but to open doors and look through windows.

I knelt beneath the window, to the right of the grime-covered frame. As I slowly raised my head, I could see the door to the left. I came up some more. The oil lamps were still burning where Jerry had left them. But the room was empty.

Even the meal things had been taken away.

I lowered myself, still butt in the shoulder, safety off, and began to follow the wall to the veranda and the door we’d gone through. No shoes outside; no target inside.

The kitchen noises were louder now, and joined by muttering in Serbo-Croat. The kitchen had to be behind one of the doors along the veranda.

My breath clouded around me as I stopped and listened. The muttering wasn’t from the target; it wasn’t that slow, deliberate, favouriteuncle voice. It sounded more like some old bottle-washer having a moan about the greasy plates.

I touched Jerry’s arm and pointed towards the passageway and across the courtyard.

I’d taken just a few steps when I heard an engine. A vehicle was approaching the house.

Fuck the noise. We ran for it.



101



I grabbed the door handle and we legged it down the corridor. My left hand was out, ready to make contact with the door at the other end. I got there; took a breath, listened. There were voices the other side, four or five of them. The vehicle was static, but not in the courtyard.

Trying to block out the sounds of our breathing, I put my ear to the wood, my right hand firmly on the pistol grip, safety catch still off, trigger finger still across the guard.

The voices were urgent and low. None was the target’s. Then his gentle tones sparked up, calming everyone down.

The engine noise got suddenly louder. The gates must have been opened.

‘Stand by.’

I fumbled for the handle with my left hand. My fingers closed round it and I pulled back. The headlights were blinding.

I made out a mass of bodies in the beams, shrouded in their own breath and exhaust fumes.

From just two feet away a body loomed in front of me, weapon coming up. I fired; he went down. His AK clattered across the threshold.

There were screams and shouts from near the vehicle. The driver revved the engine. Weapons came up into the aim.

I just blatted away, single shots at anything that moved, then into the vehicle.

Shit, it started moving.

Rounds came back at us, taking chunks out of the plasterwork that sandblasted my face.

I turned and legged it down the corridor. Jerry grabbed the AK from the floor, its barrel dragging behind him as he wrestled with the butt. ‘Back to the gate! Back to the gate!’

We burst through the door at the far end and headed across the family courtyard. Screams and movement under the veranda. It was a cluster of bottle-washers. They ducked when they saw us.

I was half-way across when we started taking fire from the follow-up behind us. I stopped, turned, and returned fire into the passage doorway.

Jerry was to my right. He ran past me as I fired controlled shots, trying to stop them leaving the passageway.

I squeezed off two more rounds at the door before Jerry started firing.

I turned on the spot and ran, got about four paces past him, turned again and started to fire. ‘Move, Jerry! Move! Move!’

He didn’t need to be told twice.

He stopped, turned, fired.

I turned, ran, stopped, fired.

As Jerry came past me I squeezed the trigger again. Nothing. Dead man’s click.

I dropped the weapon and kept running. Jerry was already the other side of the door, using the frame for cover as he fired. I passed him, then headed down towards the checkpoint, hugging the wall. I couldn’t see any moving lights. But there were shouts ahead of me in the darkness.

I pulled the Thuraya from my parka and held it to my face. ‘Fire mission! Fire mission!’ Fuck the signal: if I got one, it’d work. I had to get down there to see where the fucking wagon was.

Jerry was not many paces behind me when we started taking fire. The follow-up were through the gate and putting some down.

I swung left and dived into the treeline. ‘On me, on me!’

I just kept going, crashing through the trees, trying to keep parallel to the wall. They ran down the gap, firing into the darkness, their muzzle flashes rippling across the tree-trunks.

We plunged on towards the checkpoint. With luck, the chicane was the only way out.

With no more than twenty metres to go, the follow-up got level with us. I stumbled and fell. Jerry stood his ground and opened up with long bursts. The noise was deafening. His white muzzle flash lit the darkness. Ejected rounds tumbled over my back.

I was still fighting to get up when Jerry let out a high-pitched scream. He collapsed on top of me, still firing, rounds going way up into the canopy before both he and the AK fell silent.

His blood was hot and wet on my face as I pushed him off me. The follow-up were still firing into the treeline, everywhere, anywhere; I grabbed him by the legs and pulled him deeper into the forest.

It wasn’t far, but enough to buy me time. I collapsed next to him. His breathing was rapid and rasping, spraying me with blood at each exhalation.

I ran my fingers over his chest and found the entry wound in his stomach. No need to feel for the exit. My hand slid into it as I turned him over.

More screams from the follow-up.

Jerry gripped my head with both his hands, bringing me down to him with the last of his energy. ‘Fucked up . . . sorry.’

I threw my arms round him and gripped hard as he jerked his last resistance. Seconds later, his body went limp. I checked his neck. There was no pulse.

The follow-up still fired blindly into the trees. They were covering the light I now saw moving out from the guest doorway.

I laid Jerry’s body down and scrambled forward. A vehicle was just pulling out of the gates, guys running all around it, shouting at each other. It was chaos. One of the headlights was shot out.

I kept low and tumbled through the undergrowth to the left, down to where the treeline met the chicane.

The wagon was coming down towards me. I couldn’t see if the target was inside or not.

It got closer and slowly negotiated the first hedgehog. The rear window was open. The target was talking to his protection as they ran alongside, even smiling at them as he pointed towards the follow-up. Then his head went back inside, and made itself comfortable against the headrest. The window powered up.

I looked down and checked the Thuraya. Fucking canopy.



102



I started legging it, paralleling the wall about twenty metres inside the trees. I needed to get out of the way, well past the family doors, right to the corner of the compound. I needed clear space.

I slipped and stumbled as I scrambled to make the distance. Torchlight now flickered between the trunks.

Fuck the follow-up. I got up and kept running. Aminute or two later, I broke out from under the canopy and made my way behind the rear wall. Kneeling in the grass, gulping down oxygen, I checked the Thuraya. Five bars.

One more deep breath to slow myself down.

‘Hello, this is Nick, this is Nick. Are you up there yet? Are you up there yet?’

Monotone came back. ‘Affirmative, Nick. We see your contact. We see your contact.’

‘In the forest, towards the metalled road – you have a vehicle. One headlight. You see it?’

It seemed to take for ever for the operator to manoeuvre the UAVs thousands of feet above me, their surveillance packages scouring the ground for heat and light.

The phone was glued to my ear. My chest heaved, thirsty for oxygen. I worked my jaw, trying to conjure some saliva into my dry mouth, my head spinning with dehydration.

‘I have it, Nick, I have it.’

‘Roger that. That’s your target. That’s your target. Acknowledge.’

He still spoke as if he was ordering pizza or talking to his granny. ‘Roger. We have a northbound vehicle towards the metalled road.’

‘Roger that. The activity at the front of the house, anything inside. Hit it, for fuck’s sake, hit it now!’

‘Roger that. You might wanna get your people back.’

‘Too late. Look towards the back of the house. You will see me, I’m waving my left arm. Do you see me? Do you see me?’

‘Roger that, we have you, we have you.’

‘I’m the only one. Follow the right-hand treeline. You see a body lying about twenty-five metres from the front of the house?’

‘Yep. Roger that. We have a body. We have a body getting dragged out. That’s three guys, three guys dragging out a body.’ He paused. ‘Target now free of the treeline, on the metalled road. Stand by, Nick. Here they come.’

I ran into the forest, then threw myself to the ground as two explosions rocked the front of the building. The shockwaves were soaked up by the buildings and the woods, but the ground trembled beneath me.

Then another, this time closer. Inside the compound.

The pressure wave pushed through the forest, bringing gallons of water down on me. My ears started ringing as I waited to hear a more distant hit on the vehicle.

Seconds later, it came, and another two seconds after that.

I hoped Nuhanovic was able to see a blur of red in the distant sky as the first Hellfire kicked off. He wouldn’t understand the significance, but it would mean a fuck of a lot to me.

I got back on my feet and turned to head deeper into the forest. I switched off the Thuraya. Best conserve power till I got to the wagon and called George to confirm the slaver was dead.

Not that he would give a shit about that, now. But I would.



Turn the page for an excerpt from Aggressor, Nick Stone’s next mission

11



Washington DC

Thursday, 2 October 2003

‘Fuck it, that was over nine years ago. It’s all history now.’

Ezra sat back in his chair and studied me with one of those serious yet deeply understanding looks they probably teach at shrink school.

I shifted slightly in my own chair and the leather squeaked. I let my gaze wander along the wood-panelled walls, past the pictures and framed certificates. Ezra would probably say this was me looking for a way out, but I knew there wouldn’t be one for another twenty minutes at least. I ended up staring through the window at the Arlington Memorial Bridge, fifteen floors down and a couple of blocks away.

‘Was that the first time you felt betrayed?’

I looked at him across the low coffee-table. There was nothing on it but a box of tissues. In case I ever wante. . .