She typed piping.

That was too broad. The site kicked out over twelve thousand results. China was the biggest exporter of steel and steel pipes in the world.

Kali sat looking at the screen. Typed marine cable tubing.

No results.

She typed cable tubing.

Still nothing.

“Try marine cable conduit,” Natasha said. “Every conduit’s a pipe, but not every pipe’s a conduit. If that’s a bust, it’s time to try a thesaurus. Or one of those other sites.”

Neither proved necessary.

Kali typed in Natasha’s search term, and the screen automatically jump-linked to another page in the website with its own URL. There were still over three thousand hits, but this time there was also a date filter.

She entered the most recent set of dates and departure–arrival locations. What came up was:

Vessel Name: PRCMV Xingyun Liwu

Type: Container

Built: 2021

Shipper: Guiding Star Marine Logistics Co., Ltd.

“Lucky Gift,” Natasha said.

Kali looked at her.

“Xingyun Liwu is Mandarin. And that’s how it translates,” Natasha said. “The name of the ship is Lucky Gift.”

Kali looked at her another second and nodded.

“We should find out who owns Guiding Star...and see how it connects the rest of the Jinggu spiderweb,” she said.

Somebody on Meadows Court had called NYPD. Carmody supposed it could have been his crashing a motorcycle through the bungalow’s window, or the shooting inside, or the frag grenade exploding on the hillside. It was all just a hair louder than an alarm clock going off on the dozy street.

Be that as it may, he had barely jumped the fence into the backyard when he saw a middle-aged guy with a detective’s badge on his sport jacket a few feet away. He snapped his head around to Carmody, his hand dropping to the vicinity of the holster bulge in his jacket.

“Stop right there,” he said. “Who the fuck are you?”

“My name’s Carmody. Net Force.”

The guy grunted. “Got identification?”

“Who’s asking?”

“I’m Detective Lombardi.”

“Sorry, Lombardi.” Carmody raised his open palms chest high as he approached. “I don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t carry ID.”

“Are you kidding me?”

Carmody shook his head.

“Not worth taking a chance the bad guys get hold of it,” he said. “Where’s Agent Musil? His girls?”

“Out front,” Lombardi said. He motioned toward Carmody’s left arm with his chin. The leather sleeve was punctured and slick with blood. “What happened to you?”

“I fell off my ten-speed.”

“Must’ve been one hard fall. You hit a nail or something?”

Carmody looked at him.

“Musil and those kids. They OK?”

“Yeah. Thank God.”

Carmody nodded. Lombardi nodded back.

“I got a call from on high about you,” he said. “Your people already arrived.”

“So why’re we wasting time back here?”