With this profile in mind, Gillette was now almost ready to trace Triple-X.

It's easy to find someone in the Blue Nowhere if they don't mind being found. But if they're determined to remain hidden then tracing is an arduous and usually unsuccessful task.

To track a connection back to an individual's computer while he's online you need an Internet tracing tool – like Gillette's HyperTrace – but you might also need a phone company trace.

If Triple-X's computer was hooked up to his Internet service provider via a fiberoptic or other high-speed cable connection, rather than a telephone line, then HyperTrace could lead them to the exact longitude and latitude of the shopping mall where the hacker's computer sat.

If, however, Triple-X's machine was connected to the Net over a standard phone line via a modem – a dial-up connection, like most personal computers at home – Gillette's HyperTrace could trace the call back only to Triple-X's Internet service provider and would stop there. Then the phone company's security people would have to trace the call from the service provider to Triple-X's computer itself.

Tony Mott then snapped his fingers, looked up from his phone with a grin and said, "Okay, Pac Bell's set to trace."

"Here we go," said Gillette. He typed a message and hit ENTER. On the screens of everyone logged on to the #hack chat room appeared this message:

Renegade334: Hey Triple how you doing.

Gillette was now "imping" – pretending to be someone else. In this case he'd decided to be a seventeen-year-old hacker with marginal education but plenty of balls and adolescent attitude – just the sort you'd expect to find in this room.

Triple-X: Good, Renegade. Saw you lurking.

In chat rooms you can see who's logged on even if they're not participating in the conversation. Triple-X was reminding Gillette that he was vigilant, the corollary of which was: Don't fuck with me.

Renegade334: Im at a public terminal and people keep walking bye, its pissing me off.

Triple-X: Where you hanging?

Gillette glanced at the Weather Channel.

Renegade334: Austin, man the heat sucks. You ever been hear.

Triple-X: Only Dallas.

Renegade334: Dallas sucks, Austin rules!!!!

"Everybody ready?" Gillette called. "I'm going to try to get him alone."

Affirmative responses from around him. He felt Patricia Nolan's leg brush his. Stephen Miller sat next to her. Gillette keyed a phrase and hit ENTER.

Renegade334: Triple – How bout ICQ?

ICQ (as in "I seek you") was like instant messaging – it would link their machines together so that no one else would be able to see the conversation. A request to ICQ suggested that Renegade might have something illegal or furtive to share with Triple-X – a temptation that few hackers could resist.

Triple-X: Why?

Renegade334: can't go into it hear.

A moment later a small window opened on Gillette's screen.

Triple-X: So what's happening, dude?

"Run it," Gillette called to Stephen Miller, who started HyperTrace. Another window popped up on the monitor, depicting a map of Northern California. Blue lines appeared on the map as the program traced the route from CCU back to Triple-X.

"It's tracing," Miller called. "Signal goes from here to Oakland to Reno to Seattle…"

Renegade334: thanks man for the ICQ. Thing is I got a problem and Im scared. This dudes on my case and the word is your a total wizard and I heard you might know somthing.

You can never massage a hacker's ego too much, Wyatt Gillette knew.

Triple-X: What dude?

Renegade334: His names Phate.

There was no response.

"Come on, come on," Gillette urged in a whisper. Thinking: Don't vanish. I'm a scared kid. You're a wizard. Help me…

Triple-X: What aobut him? I mean, about.

Gillette glanced at the window on his computer screen that showed HyperTrace's progress in locating the routing computers. Triple-X's signal was jumping all over the western United States. Finally it ended at the last hub, Bay Area On-Line Services, located in Walnut Creek, which was just north of Oakland.

"Got his service provider," Stephen Miller called. "It's a dial-in service."

"Damn," Patricia Nolan muttered. This meant that a phone company trace was necessary to pinpoint the final link from the server in Walnut Creek to the computer cafe where Triple-X was sitting.

"We can do it," Linda Sanchez called enthusiastically, a cheerleader. "Just keep him on the line, Wyatt."

Tony Mott called Bay Area On-Line and told the head of the security department what was going on. The security chief in turn called his own technicians, who would coordinate with Pacific Bell and trace the connection from Bay Area back to Triple-X's location. Mott listened for a moment then called, "Pac Bell's scanning. It's a busy area. Might take ten, fifteen minutes."

"Too long, too long!" Gillette said. "Tell 'em to speed it up."

But from his days as a phone phreak, breaking into Pac Bell himself, Gillette knew that phone company employees might have to physically run through the switches – which are huge rooms filled with electrical relays – visually finding the connections, in order to trace a call back to its source.

Renegade334: I heard about this totally robust hack of Phates I mean totally and I saw him online and I asked him about it only he just dissed me. then Weird stuff started happening after that and I heard about this script he wrote called trapdoor and now Im totally paranoyd.

A pause, then:

Triple-X: So what're you asking?

"He's scared," Gillette said. "I can feel it."

Renegade334: this trapdoor thing, does it really get him in your machine and go through all your shit, I mean like EVERYTHING, and you don't even know it.

Triple-X: I don't think it really exists. Like an urban legend.

Renegade334: I don't know man I think its real, I saw my fucking files OPENING and no way was I doing it.

"We've got incoming," Miller said. "He's pinging us."

Triple-X was, as Gillette had predicted, running his own version of HyperTrace to check out Renegade334. The anonymizing program that Stephen Miller had hacked together, however, would make Triple-X's machine think Renegade was in Austin. The hacker must have gotten this report and believed it because he didn't log off.

Triple-X: Why do you care about him? You're at a public terminal. He can't get into your files there.

Renegade334: I'm just hear today cause my fucking parents' took away my Dell for a week cause a my grades. At home I was online and the keyboard was fucked up and then files started opening all by themself. I freaked. I mean, totally.

Another long pause. Then finally the hacker responded.

Triple-X: You oughta be freaked. I know Phate.

Renegade334: Yeah how?

Triple-X: Just started talking to him in a chat room. Helped me debug some script. Traded some warez.