Sealed and delivered: Great story in current New Yorker by Will Mackin

Great short story in the current New Yorker, Kattekoppen, by Will Mackin - he's a writer I've never heard of and it's possible this is his first nationally published story; bio note confirms what we may have surmised from the story, that he's a veteran who's done several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan - not all great war writers actually served (Crane, O'Nan I think) but most have - and if this story is evidence Mackin could be the O'Brien of the Afghan 21st-century wars. The story is sharp and surprising, a truly authentic and distinct voice, and a particular rarity in that Mackin's narration combines literary and cultural values and referrents without being pretentious or incongruous - or at least the incongruities are surprising and striking. Story is about a platoon of SEALS in Logar (?) Afghanistan, in need of a guy to aim their howitzer guns; the narrator and another seal recruit a few different guys from a lesser-ranked unit to do the job - which seems kind of boring and routine until two soldiers make a wrong turn and get captured by local Afghans and the Seals go on a mission to find the soldiers or their bodies. Examples of Mackin's smart style: one of the howitzer gunners recruited is oddly a Dutch guy who gets shipments of candy from his mother, one type he leaves because he doesn't like them is the eponymous Dutch licorice, which means catheads I think - these oddlooking candies play a surprising role in the mission to recover the abducted soldiers. Dutch guy, Levi, when asked how his visit home on leave went, says :Goot (Mackin's sharp ear for oddities there). Mackin brings us right into this encampment, he doesn't explain things but gives us just enough info to start figuring out the rules of this alien world with pink-looking snow, light from the moon like an X-ray, the slimey feel of corpse and the stink as it's bagged, the new recruit who passes time playing online mah-jongg (eventually they call him MJ, which we catch on to after a moment). Mackin seems like a super tough-guy - the Seals are the alpha dogs for sure - and he's a tough guy narrator, too, explaining little, treating us as if we're recruits who'd better catch on - and then startling us with an insight: the stamps from Holland that have images from Breugal paintings - including the Death of Icarus, and Mackin notes that the image does not include the people who aren't watching the fall - a little wink from Mackin to show us he's an educated guy, not (or not just?) a killing machine. If he can sustain this kind of writing - whether over the course of a novel or of many stories - he'll e a major voice. This is just the kind of story I hope to find in the New Yorker - news from our world, real, topical, thoughtful, a fresh voice that's neither self-consciously literary nor a poseur.