The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (51 page)

At about 7 p.m., Orsak and Murphy pull up at Raleigh-Durham
Airport in a big white Ram Charger with the Sprint logo. Orsak left
his Blazer back at the cell switch.

"He looked like a Japanese surfer guy from California," recalls
Orsak. "Oakley sunglasses, shorts, T-shirt, black gym shorts, san-
dals. I was thinking, 'Is this the guy?' "

But Murphy's impressed by how quickly Shimomura gets down to
business.

"He's the best," Shimomura says of Mitnick. "But I think we're
better."

Orsak is just trying to keep up. "Shimomura jumps right into tell-
ing us who we're looking for, giving us the background, saying he
was the world's most wanted hacker," recalls Orsak. "He didn't
think Mitnick was doing it professionally, like espionage, like selling
from one company to another."

The Sprint technicians shuttle Shimomura to pick up his teal blue
Geo Storm rental car and lead him back to the switch. Shimomura is
making quite an impression on the Sprint technicians. "Shimomura
showed us his Palmtop hookup to his Oki phone just as soon as we
got back to the switch," recalls Orsak. But while Orsak is intrigued
by the rig, he knows it's just a toy compared to his Cellscope. Shimo-
mura's Oki 900 scanning rig may be great for eavesdropping, but
without an antenna it can't lead them to Mitnick.

FBI agents John Vasquez and Laythell Thomas are waiting for
Shimomura and the Sprint technicians at the Sprint cell switch.
"They had to be there before we could show Shimomura the call
records," recalls Murphy. "He [Shimomura] was a consultant at
that point. We couldn't show call records unless they were there."

Murphy shows the group how to read the Sprint call detail rec-
ords, and they settle in, waiting for the hacker to begin his nightly
routine. The agents are ambivalent. Special Agent Vasquez ducks
out after roughly half an hour and leaves Thomas to accompany him
and Shimomura on the surveillance operation.

About eleven o'clock, Orsak drives Shimomura over to the cell
site in his red Blazer, Thomas following in his car. Shimomura con-
tinues demonstrating his Oki 900 scanner as Orsak drives, putting
the custom monitoring software through its paces. "Why don't you
give me one?" the Sprint technician jokes. Shimomura takes him
seriously, saying he can get the software and interface cheap from
some guy he knows in California. Orsak makes a pit stop at a BP gas
station. He grabs a Coke and some peanuts. Shimomura buys
bottled water, a Mountain Dew, and potato chips. They figure
they're in for a long night.

About 11:30 p.m., they arrive at the cell site, a tiny-one room prefab
building crammed with powerful radios and relay racks, temperature
controlled at a constant sixty-five degrees. The fluorescent-lit room
hums like a beehive. The refrigerator-sized emergency battery buzzes,

and the air conditioners whir incessantly. The cell site is a hub, a local
Sprint cellular link, logistically the best place to base their tracking
operations. If Mitnick is indeed calling over this cell site he's probably
not more than a few miles away.

The plan is simple: monitor at the cell site until Mitnick dials up,
and then track him with Orsak's Cellscope. Murphy has already co-
ordinated with a technician at the competing CellularOne. If Mit-
nick switches to CellularOne's radio band, they'll phone Murphy,
who in turn will page with the new channel. But that's really just
backup. Orsak's programmed the Cellscope to scan the seventy local
channels — both Sprint and CellularOne. The scope scans a hundred
in about a second. And if it fails, there's always Shimomura's Oki
900 rig as a backup.

Orsak's the expert on the Cellscope, an advanced scanner
with full direction finding capability. Shimomura seems to have
never seen one before, so Orsak gladly shows him the basic opera-
tions: how to hit the space bar to continue scanning, how to
read the MIN, the number being dialed, and the signal strength.
Thomas, meanwhile, remains disinterested. After about half an
hour, the agent announces he's leaving for the night. Orsak and
Shimomura can't believe it. How could the FBI be so nonchalant
when they're on the tail of the world's most wanted hacker? How
could the FBI call it quits before the night's surveillance has even
begun?

Around 1 a.m. Murphy phones Orsak. He just got a call from
CellularOne.

"We've got activity! Let's roll! " Murphy exclaims, reading the
three-digit channel to Orsak.

They jump in the red Blazer. Orsak punches in the frequency and
reaches into the back to adjust the Cellscope's volume control. Static
crackles through the Blazer. Orsak tones it down and pulls a quick
right out of the parking lot, heading west on 70 toward the airport.
The laptop sits on the front console between them, the signal
strength weak, only about -105 dBm. A mile and a half down the
road, near the airport, the modem static fades. The reading slips to
-115 dBm, the scope is silent. They've left the local sector's 60-
desree slice of air.

"We've gotta turn around," Orsak says with a shrug.
A mile back on 70, the crackle of the modem resumes.
"There it is again," Orsak says, turning on Duraleigh.
"Ninety, ninety-five," Shimomura calls out the readings.
Suddenly a message flashes across the Cellscope.

NO SAT

"He hung up," Orsak explains.

The code means the handoff was lost or the caller just hung up.

Orsak parks in front of a little library in a small shopping center
and they wait, Shimomura nervously playing with his Oki and Palm-
top, cruising the channels. They pick up a couple of very brief Mit-
nick calls, both data, just a minute or so long.

Modem breath suddenly courses through the Blazer again, and the
familiar MIN pops up on the laptop window: 602-6523. And this time
the call doesn't die. The bar graph shows the signal's strong, around
-90 dBms. Mitnick's online again, and he's not far away.

Orsak revs up his Blazer and continues on Duraleigh. He pulls
into an apartment complex, but the signal fades again. The signal's
north, back where they came from.

They've got to be close, very close. If only Mitnick would stay
online just a little longer! Orsak exits the complex, drives back along
Duraleigh and turns at Tournament Drive, entering the Player's
Club complex. Halfway around the ring that circles the apartments,
Orsak takes the antenna from Shimomura and points it toward the
driver's window. He's passing right by what looks like the manager's
office, the reading leaping from -60 to -40 dBms.

"Look for lights in the windows!" Shimomura cries. "Don't let
him see you, don't let him see you!"

But the windows in the Blazer are tinted, and the small aluminum
antenna is black. Orsak's not worried about being spotted, and it's
so late the apartment units all seem dark.

Orsak keeps driving and pointing the antenna. Half an hour, that's
all it took. Half an hour to track Kevin Mitnick to his neighborhood.

■ ■ ■

Shimomura is back at the cell site telephone, trying to rustle up some
help from the FBI. "He told Walker we had found him, we were one
hundred percent sure that it was Mitnick," says Orsak. "I could tell
Kent Walker told him he'd get the wheels in motion. Shimomura
was very concerned about getting him right away."

Meanwhile, Murphy pages FBI Agent Thomas. "Thomas was
calm," says Murphy. "They wanted to come out in the morning and
put it [Mitnick's apartment] under surveillance. We were pumped
up. We thought they'd be right there. We were kinda upset, thinking
they were taking their time. They said, 'We are the FBI. This won't
be the first bust we ever made.' "

Murphy conferences in Shimomura, trying to convey the urgency:
"He [Shimomura] said, 'This guy is wily. You missed him by min-
utes a few months ago. He may not be around in the morning.' We
started to get upset. Thomas was tired. He wasn't about to be pres-
sured by us amateurs."

Meanwhile, Shimomura gets a page. It's John Markoff, just in at the
Raleigh-Durham Airport. He talks to the reporter briefly and passes the
phone to Orsak, asking him to provide directions. Orsak doesn't have
any idea who he's talking to. Ten minutes later, Markoff shows up in a
purple Geo. He's intrigued by the equipment at the cell site.

"What does this do?" asks the curious Markoff. "How does this
work?"

Orsak explains the radio gear to the
Times
reporter, walking him
through the building. Then, Orsak checks his page. Murphy's sent
him Mitnick's channel.

" 'That's Mitnick! That's Mitnick! That's him all right!' " Orsak
recalls Shimomura saying.

"John's eyes get real big, and he's going, 'Is it him? Is it really him?' "

But Shimomura's worried.

"I don't know, maybe we shouldn't go," Shimomura begins, wor-
ried they might be spotted. But he quickly reconsiders. "Maybe we
should go."

"I want to go," Markoff eagerly chimes in. "I'm going too."

They pile into the Blazer. Everyone's got a job. One team member
shouts out the signal reading, while another sweeps the short antenna
slowly back and forth. Orsak just tries to keep his eye on the road.

"Shimomura is in the passenger seat," recalls Orsak. "Markoff is
in the back, holding the antenna."

Nine months after the event, and two weeks after galleys of my
book were sent out to reviewers and the press, John Markoff's attor-
ney sent my publisher a letter, claiming parts of Mr. Orsak's account
were wrong. I made numerous calls to Mr. Orsak and then received
the following Pac Bell voice mail message on Sunday, November 19,
at 3:13 a.m., Pacific time:

"Hello, Mr. Liftman, this is Joe Orsak. I got your message yester-
day and I have been talking with Shimomura and Mr. Markoff, and
I'm sorry if I was mistaken about any equipment being put in their
rental car or the fact that Mr. Markoff had ever touched any of it. So
if this caused you any trouble I'm sorry, or if I've given the wrong
impression."

According to Orsak's original interviews, as they near the Player's
Club Shimomura directs Markoff, "Point that way, point that way."

The next trip was in a Geo. "Shimomura said it would be a good
idea to change cars," says Orsak. "I remember us joking about the
ugly-colored cars."

Joe Orsak of Sprint said he put the Cellscope in Markoff's rental
car. Markoff says the Cellscope was not put in his car.

Back at the cell site, it takes about ten minutes to transfer the
equipment to the Geo. Orsak hooks the Cellscope into the cigarette
adapter, plugs the Cellscope into his laptop, and attaches a fifteen-
foot coaxial cable to the portable antenna. According to Orsak,
Markoff starts up the rental car, the Cellscope begins scanning, and
within a minute, for the first time, instead of modem breath, they're
plucking voices out of the sky. It's Mitnick and he's talking to some-
body they know.

"Is that Emmanuel [Goldstein]?" asks Shimomura.

"Yeah!" replies Markoff. "I think it is."

The team quiets down so they can hear. Mitnick makes it easy,
addressing Emmanuel by name. The hacker seems in good humor,
talking about the cool and rainy weather. "They were mentioning
names of other people," recalls Orsak. " 'How is so and so doing?' "

Mitnick's voice, coming over the local cellular, is the loudest, but

both parties are clearly recognizable. There may be a problem. The
federal subpoena doesn't give unauthorized individuals the right to
eavesdrop on voice calls.

Minutes later, just as Shimomura's team crosses Highway 70, Em-
manuel Goldstein and Kevin Mitnick bid each other good night. The
investigators motor on toward Mitnick's apartment.

• ■ ■

Monday afternoon, Special Agent LeVord Burns sits by the coffee
pot and vending machine at the Sprint switch and debates the legal
issues with Shimomura. "Tsutomu wanted us to kick the door
down," recalls Orsak, who along with Murphy, listened in. "Burns
was talking about what warrants had been issued, what the FBI was
going to do."

Burns impresses Orsak. A well-built, bespectacled black man in a
suit and tie, Burns looks like the kind of FBI agent that doesn't miss
details. As Burns recounts Mitnick's background, Orsak is surprised
by what the agent says about Mitnick. "Burns said there were a lot
of guys that as far as national security went were a lot more dan-
gerous than Mitnick — that a lot of professional hackers are a lot
more dangerous." To Orsak, cyberspace's Most Wanted Hacker
doesn't sound all that threatening. "One of the more interesting
things, I thought, was the FBI goes, 'As far as hackers go,' Mitnick
was 'benign.' They didn't have evidence he was in it for the money."

A little later, John Markoff and Shimomura's girlfriend, Julia
Menapace, who just flew in, arrive at the switch. Orsak and Murphy
invite Shimomura's team, Burns, and two other FBI agents from
Quantico, Virginia, out to Ragazzi's, a casual Italian restaurant
nearby. Orsak spreads out a Raleigh street plan on the checkered
tablecloth and pinpoints Mitnick's location.

"LeVord was telling us what his involvement was for the FBI,"
recalls Murphy. "It was light banter. LeVord assumed like we all
did, that Markoff was just another guy out of California. Just an-
other egghead. One of Tsutomu's."