Page 3 of The Code

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.”