Kattekoppen
By Will Mackin, first published in The New Yorker
While a howitzer liaison for an American military unit in Afghanistan returns home on parental leave, his unit embarks on a mission to find two missing soldiers and finds a possibly permanent replacement for him.
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Levi becomes Seal Team Six's new howitzer liaison in Logar, Afghanistan. He moves into the team's compound and shares his mother's Dutch candies with the unit. Nobody wants the Kattekopen, which are brown cat heads of licorice. The men think they taste foul. Levi sits at his desk and draws circles of possible error where howitzer rounds could fall. Levi's wife is having a child, and he's going on leave soon, so the unit needs to find a temporary replacement while he's gone. They find a young and eager replacement, and Levi hops on a helicopter to get home to his wife. Two soldiers have been ambushed south of Kabul, and a helicopter brings in the soldiers' ruined truck. Team Six begins to search for the missing soldiers. Each day, they search farther and farther away from their base. The new howitzer liaison proves himself to be very capable. The unit finds one of the soldier's bodies in a ditch. He has a note in his pocket indicating the whereabouts of the other soldier's grave. The unit brings the two bodies back to their compound. Levi returns. His son has been born and is healthy. The unit has devised a test for Levi to determine whether or not the unit still has a place for him, and Levi fires at a target—the dead soldiers' truck. Levi begins to get his bearing for another hit, but the magnetic pole has drifted slightly, and the men holding the heavy shells for the next round of fire curse at the hold-up.
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