Page 2 of The Code (Orphan X)

The toe is too far gone. Without permission he curls up on his side, tugging off the boot. He winces from the pain, bites his lower lip to stifle a cry. The smell is diabolical, rotting meat basted in sweat. Whimpering, he peels his sock off.

The toe looks postapocalyptic. It is deserving of some trace of pity, even from a SEAL master chief. And Evan has timed this perfectly to shirk the night swim.

The master chief crouches over him, knees cracking. He stabs his lit cigar at the spectacle on Evan’s foot and it takes everything Evan has not to flinch. “Go.”

Medical is a one-mile jog. He does it with gratitude. He is moving toward the glow at the end of the tunnel. His body is exhausted, his mind melting. The pain feels like it has roosted permanently in his toe; the digit will never not be a hot poker of agony.

He thumps through the door into medical.

Another instructor is waiting. A blue shirt and khaki shorts, despite the hour.

There is a TV on an office-beige file cabinet and it shows a clip of a shark attack, rolling hockey-puck eyes, teeth undulating like a spike harrow on a tractor.

The instructor is half the depth and width of the master chief but still, next to Evan, he looks like a gun safe.

He gestures at a metal folding chair with a pair of janky paramedic scissors.

Evan’s stomach drops through the floor.

He sits. He is facing the television. A great white breaches, ripping a sea lion from side to side. On the metal tray by the instructor’s foot waits a pair of needle-nose pliers.

The instructor lowers the scissors toward the sickly black-green wreckage of the toenail. “You might think this is blackout pain. But it’s not. So keep your eyes open.”

Evan does.

He also makes noises he cannot help and there is no shame in them as long as he doesn’t look away. His eyes water and his chest convulses, but he is there and present and breathing so it does not count as crying.

The scissors chomp down the middle of the nail past the cuticle to the root.

Before Evan can find breath, the pliers wrench the two stiff planks free from the nail bed.

He swoons from the pain but the instructor catches his sagging forehead on a meaty biceps, props him once more into the folding chair, and slaps a cold washcloth on the back of his neck.

The TV documentary has switched to fatal shark attacks on humans—churning red water, missing limbs, last-ditch medical attention.

“You got five breaths,” the instructor says.

“Till my car?”

The instructor laughs. “Ocean water’s good for the swelling. And it’ll help disinfect it.”

Evan feels an instant of utter and comprehensive defeat.

There is no way.

They can’t make him.

He can’t do it.

His toe looks like someone lit off a firecracker under the nail. He thinks about sand. He thinks about flippers. He thinks about salt. He thinks about blood in the water. He thinks about great white sharks breaching for the kill.

“That’s your fifth. Go on now, son. You think Lash is grumpy now, try makin’ that man wait.”

Evan hobbles back out. Another mile run across the compound to the first meet spot. Carrying one boot and wearing the other, he makes moaning noises with each step because there is no one to hear. His exposed toe is bleeding but at least not psssss bleeding.

The master chief—Lash—waits at the pitch-black edge of the ocean by his Jeep. He throws stubby swim fins at Evan. Made of stiff car-tire rubber, they look Korean War–era.

Trembling and cowering, he sits and snaps on the first, eases on the second. His whole body throbs; he shivers and clatters. The rigid fins are horrendously tight, denting his Achilles tendon, cramping down over his ruined toe.

The master chief hops in his Jeep, clicks his stopwatch with emphasis. Then he speeds off down the beach, spraying sand on Evan.

Evan looks up at the moon. Unmoved, it looks back down.

He wades into the freezing water. Grit. Salt. Pain.

In a tortured crawl, he swims parallel to the beach. Time goes in and out.

At some point he hears a horn honking and he sees he’s passed the Jeep and he cuts for shore. The waves rush up his back, seething across his shoulders, and he falls over and rips the fin off.

“Rinse yerself,” the master chief says. “I don’t need your sand in my rig.”

Evan does.

He climbs in. The master chief drives him back to another building in the compound.

Evan’s teeth are chattering. There’s a big locker room and an open shower, a dozen nozzles and him.

The SEALs shower together here. He imagines camaraderie, swim buddies pulling each other through. Evan wonders what that might feel like.

The master chief throws a towel at him and stands still, crossed arms ballooning like Popeye’s. A change of navy-issue clothes sits on a bench along with Evan’s dainty Portuguese loafers. Light-headed, Evan tries not to slump, hang his head, or nod off.

“Just so you know,” Lash says, “I haven’t updated my opinion about you. Not one bit.”

And then—Was that a wink?

Evan doesn’t know if the master chief just winked at him. And that wink would be everything. And there is no way he can ask.

Before he can say anything, the master chief steps back out of the locker room and swings the door shut in Evan’s face.

The water isn’t hot but after what Evan’s been through it feels like a soothing warm spring. The spray singes his toe but it’s not so awful now with the offending nail out. He leans against the wall. He dozes off, catches himself just before he tumbles to the hard tile.

He towels off, dresses. Given the toe, he opts to keep the protective combat boots over the fashionable loafers.

Before dumping the loafers in the trash, he removes the secreted-away twenty-dollar bill and transfers it to the same beneath-the-insole spot in the right boot.

When he walks outside, no one is around.

The wind blows sand into his face, his teeth.

In a distant parking lot, headlights flare.

He walks over.

As he nears, a shadow of a man climbs out of the driver’s seat of a rusted Toyota pickup and walks away into the night, leaving the truck running, headlights on.

Evan climbs in. The seat receives him. Though it is shitty, it feels so, so plush and comfortable. He could sleep. Right here.

On the passenger seat is a stuffed envelope.

And a burner cell phone, on speaker.

Jack’s voice comes at him from the phone: “I hear you performed passably.”

“Yes.” Evan picks up the envelope. “There was a toe thing.”

“Decent job flying out there as Portuguese national.”

A rare compliment.

Evan braces himself. He tilts the envelope. Out slide three bundles of hundred-dollar bills, a Spanish passport, and a credit card in the name of GUILLERMO RODE ESCANDON .

Jack’s disembodied voice orders, “Come back tomorrow as a Northern Spaniard.”

Exhausted and disheveled, Evan drags himself off the airplane at Dulles International. He is tired of playing someone else, of being on constant alert, of speaking Spanish with a lisp.

Also? He is just plain fucking tired.

As he exits the gate, a slender-shouldered man awaits him, Mr. E.S. scrawled on the sign he displays like a mugshot placard. The guy’s about forty, sandy-blond mustache, looks like a TV salesman for an electronics superstore. Despite his ramrod posture, he can’t be taller than five foot five.

Did Jack actually send someone to pick Evan up, a brief post-mission reprieve? Evan imagines sinking into the soft leather of a backseat, tilting his head to the window, and slumbering.

He approaches warily, speaks the code he has been taught: “Thanks for waiting on the X.”

“That’s the mission, sir.” Protocol confirmed. The man’s name tag reads BOB , another nod to his everyman-ness. “This way.”

There is no bag for the man to take. Evan follows him through the crowded terminal, doing his best not to limp.

They find themselves alone in an elevator heading to Parking Level 3.

“I’m sorry, son,” Bob says, dropping the pretense of formality the instant the doors slide shut. “Jack’s had a heart attack. He’s in the ICU. And it…”—a faint quaver of the voice and Evan wonders how this man knows Jack or if he knows him at all—“… it doesn’t look good.”

A wave of heat washes through Evan, setting his nerves tingling. It cannot be true. It simply cannot be true.

He mouths the words his training has placed at the ready: “Who’s Jack?”

“Jack Johns,” the man says. “I know there are comms directives. I know you are likely feeling denial. But this is real, son. It is serious. And we need to discuss what comes next for you.”

Evan’s vision grows glassy. But he will not cry. Not right now. Not in an elevator with Bob.

He tries not to think about flannel shirts and the smell of single-barrel scotch. Or about Jack’s study with its mallard-green walls. Or about the way Jack smirks when he is amused, that square baseball-catcher head bobbing slightly.

He tries not to think about what Jack means to him. And what it will mean to be in the world without him.

Now the elevator doors part.

Now he is following Bob on numb legs across the parking garage. A family passes them, kids quarreling, parents pack-mule burdened with bags, tugging rolling suitcases on either side of them.

Once they’ve passed, Bob says quietly, “You will be assigned another handler. Your training will continue uninterrupted.”

“Can…?” Evan’s throat closes off. He was going to say Can I see him?

but he knows to never confirm anything about his relationship with Jack.

He wonders when and how this next phase can be initiated if he cannot communicate about what is happening.

He wonders how he will ever continue on his trajectory to become Orphan X without Jack at his back looking out for him.

They cut between two SUVs, sliding alongside a white cleaning van.

Bob stops, facing Evan, hands resting on his shoulders, turning him slightly. “What?” he says, his tone mercifully kind. “What would you like to ask?”