“Well, George, you was the one wanted to set these things on fire about a minute ago.”

“Yeah. Now I’m thinking the other way.”

“Well, it’s too late. We already showed our hand here. We might as well go on like we started.”

“Now think about it a minute, Seldom. They’ll all get here about the same time tomorrow morning. Everybody starts up the engine on his piece of equipment, or tries to. Some’ll discover right away that we cut up the wiring. I mean on the machines we already cut. But look, on the others, if we let the wiring alone, let the fuel lines alone, so they can start the engines, then the sand and the Karo will really do some good. I mean they’ll have a chance to do the work we want them to do: ruin the engines. What do you think about that?”

They leaned side by side against the steel track of the Cat, gazing at each other through the soft starlight.

“I kind of wish we had figured all this out before,” Smith said. “We ain’t got all night.”

“Why don’t we have all night?”

“Because I reckon we ought to be fifty miles away from here come morning. That’s why.”

“Not me,” Hayduke said. “I’m going to hang around and watch what happens. I want that personal fucking satisfaction.”

A hoot owl hooted from the earthmover up ahead. “What’s going on back there?” Bonnie called. “You think this is a picnic or something?”

“Okay,” Smith said, “let’s keep it kinda simple. Let’s put these here cutters away for a while and just work on the oil and fuel systems. God knows we got plenty of sand here. About ten thousand square miles of it.” Agreed.

They went on, quickly and methodically now, from machine to machine, pouring sand into each crankcase and down every opening which led to moving parts. When they had used up all their Karo syrup, they dumped sand into the fuel tanks, as an extra measure.

All the way, into the night, Hayduke, Smith, they worked their way to the end of the line. Now one, now the other, would relieve Bonnie at the lookout post so that she too could participate fully in field operations. Teamwork, that’s what made America great: teamwork and initiative, that’s what made America what it is today. They worked over the Cats, they operated on the earthmovers, they gave the treatment to the Schramm air compressors the Hyster compactors the Massey crawler-loaders the Joy Ram track drills the Dart D-600 wheel loaders not overlooking one lone John Deere 690-A excavator backhoe, and that was about all for the night; that was about enough; old Morrison-Knudsen had plenty of equipment all right but somebody was due for headaches in the morning when the sun came up and engines were fired up and all those little particles of sand, corrosive as powdered emery, began to wreak earth’s vengeance on the cylinder walls of the despoilers of the desert.