“He’s all right. He lives inside his head most of the time anyway.”

Another giant machine looms out of the darkness before them. A hauler; they chop it up. Then the next. Bonnie watches from her post in the cab of a nearby earthmover. Next! The men go on.

“If only we could start up the motors on these sombitches,” Hayduke said. “We could drain the oil out, let the motors run and walk away. They’d take care of themselves and we’d be finished a lot faster.”

“That’d do it,” Smith allowed. “Drain the oil and let the engines run. They’d seize up tighter’n a bull’s asshole by fly time. They never would get them buggers prised open.”

“We could give each one a try anyhow.” And acting on his words, Hayduke climbed to the controls of a big bulldozer. “How do you start this mother?”

“I’ll show you if we find one ready to go.”

“How about a hot wire? Maybe we could start it that way. Bypass the ignition.”

“Not a caterpillar tractor. This ain’t no car, George, you know. This is a D-Eight. This here’s heavy-duty industrial equipment; this ain’t the old Farmall back home.”

“Well, I’m ready for driving lessons anytime.”

Hayduke climbed down from the operator’s seat. They worked on the patient, sifting handfuls of fine Triassic sand into the crankcase, cutting up the wiring, the fuel lines, the hydraulic hoses to fore and aft attachments, dumping Karo into the fuel tanks. Why Karo instead of plain sugar? Smith wanted to know. Pours better, Hayduke explained; mixes easier with the diesel, doesn’t jam up in strainers. You sure about that? No.

Hayduke crawled under the bulldozer to find the drain plug in the oil pan. He found it, through an opening in the armored skid plate, but needed a big wrench to crack it loose. They tried the toolbox in the cab. Locked. Hayduke broke the lock with his cold chisel and hammer. Inside they found a few simple and massive instruments: an iron spanner three feet long; a variety of giant end wrenches; a sledgehammer; a wooden-handled monkey wrench; nuts, bolts, friction tape, wire.

Hayduke took the spanner, which looked like the right size, and crawled again underneath the tractor. He struggled for a while with the plug, finally broke it loose and let out the oil. The great machine began to bleed; its lifeblood drained out with pulsing throbs, onto the dust and sand. When it was all gone he replaced the plug. Why? Force of habit—thought he was changing the oil in his jeep.

Hayduke surfaced, smeared with dust, grease, oil, rubbing a bruised knuckle. “Shit,” he said, “I don’t know.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Are we doing this job right? That’s what I don’t know. Now the operator gets on this thing in the morning, tries to start it up, nothing happens. So the first thing he sees is all the wiring cut, all the fuel lines cut. So putting sand in the crankcase, draining the oil, isn’t going to do any good till they get the motor to run. But when they fix all the wiring and lines they’re gonna be checking other things too. Like the oil level, naturally. Then they find the sand. Then they see somebody’s drained the oil. I’m thinking if we really want to do this monkey wrench business right, maybe we should hide our work. I mean keep it simple and sophisticated.”