There's no direct way, but there's a kludge: in an END block you can change the exit code by changing $?. Thus, you can do this:

$EXIT = ~0
END { $? and $? = $EXIT; }
sub xdie { $EXIT = shift; die @_; }

xdie 16, "argh";
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Update: See the other reply for a simpler way:

sub xdie { $! = shift; die $@; }

xdie 16, "argh";
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