Page 3 of The Code (Orphan X)

Evan’s lower jaw is trembling ever so slightly. He clenches. He does not trust his throat or his voice.

A faint purring sounds behind him.

A spit hood slams over his head.

He is ripped violently backward into the van.

Slammed on his stomach. A hefty knee crushes into the space between his shoulder blades.

Powerful hands zip-tie his wrists behind his back.

A needle slips into his neck and he feels the press of warmth into his bloodstream, spreading through shoulder and pectoral and then drawing across the rest of his torso like a funeral shroud.

Has he just been killed?

Has he been captured by enemies of the Program?

Or is this another more brutal phase of training?

The First Commandment slips into his brain— Assume nothing —and then he wobbles out of consciousness into whatever comes next.

His eyes are crusted shut.

He is next-level cold, the air a brisk fifty-something Fahrenheit.

He lies in the dirt. A grave?

Is he dead?

He pries his eyes open. The sun feels blinding, though as his vision adjusts he sees it is 4:00 P.M. low in a dreary gray sky. He is in the middle of a forest. Yellow birch and pine thrust up like totem poles.

He tries to sit up, realizes his wrists are still bound behind him. His shoulders are both asleep, as well as his left arm.

He rolls onto his side. Squat-hunching, he tries to work his bound hands around to his front. He cannot get them over the thick tactical soles of his combat boots.

The next fifteen minutes are spent working his laced-up boots off by shoving them against each other, bringing fresh agony to his injured toe. The left boot finally pries free. He uses his right big toe to tug at the paracord shoelace of the left boot until it, too, pops free.

Now he can swing his hands beneath his feet to get them to his front side.

He stands up, pine needles poking through his socks.

The ground is so cold it feels wet. The flex-cuffs are standard, made of durable polymers.

Using his teeth, he tightens them even more.

Then he brings his fists up over his head and slams them down across his rising knee.

A jolt of pain rocks through his forearms but nothing else happens.

He braces himself, does it again. The flex-cuffs snap free.

He has control of all four limbs now. Such as they are.

His pockets have been emptied. No bundles of hundred-dollar bills, no Spanish passport, no credit card under a phony name.

He has nothing aside from a thin layer of clothes. This is how survival, evasion, resistance, and escape training goes.

SERE is hell.

There is nothing Evan hates more.

He collects himself.

First things first.

Boots back on, lace tightly.

As he rises once more, his back aches.

He is not dressed to weather a night in the forest. Not in February.

He has no idea how long he has been unconscious or where he is.

He has been left on the side of a mountain slope. Okay. Catch up to reality and embrace it. Reality, after all, is undefeated.

He scrabbles along a rocky ridge until he comes to a break in the trees.

A constricted view shows high elevation and familiar mountain peaks.

It appears that he is looking down on the Piedmont foothills, which puts him somewhere in the Bull Run Mountains of Northern Virginia.

He estimates he is seventy klicks from Jack’s farmhouse, the place he has called home since his thirteenth year.

At nightfall, he’ll be able to orient better by the stars. If he hasn’t frozen to death by then.

He has done much of his SERE training in these mountains.

Though his firecracker toe will slow him down, if he takes the best route sticking to moderate terrain, he can average a bit over five kilometers an hour. That means fourteen hours of hard hiking to get home.

He is depleted from travel and beach runs and underwater knot tying and O-training and the impromptu toe surgery and the cortisol and prolactin wash of thinking Jack was going to die on him. Calorie depletion, drug withdrawal, and the stress of being kidnapped don’t help.

He is sitting down on a rocky outcropping.

His groggy head tips into his hands.

He is alive. Jack is not dead.

He is overcome with emotion, everything rushing him all at once. He feels it pressing through the back of his face, constricting his throat, loosening his sinuses.

He yells. A deep-chested bellow of grief and pain and fear that rolls out across the valley and comes back to him. The echo is the loneliest sound he’s ever heard.

One primal scream is all he will allow himself.

Energy is low and night is coming. He has to get to work.

He is down to a long-sleeved T-shirt and cammy pants and nothing else.

He stuffs his shirt with moss for warmth and then finds a stream in which to wash his toe.

It looks angry but not yet infected. The chill stream shocks him alert.

The freezing water is exceedingly painful but he holds the foot under until the toe goes numb.

Always clean your gear even when the gear is just body parts.

The thought of fourteen hours of hiking on a bum foot elicits in him utter dread, but he pushes the sentiment down.

As he pulls his socks back on, he is struck by a lightning bolt of hope. The twenty-dollar bill. It takes a few tries to peel up the right boot’s insole, but there it is.

Bob he can practically feel the stench taking up residence in his lungs.

He comes back out.

Light-headed from exertion and calorie depletion, he stumbles on the two plywood steps and bumps into a passerby.