By the time Jack crosses into the war zone in 1987, Afghanistan has swallowed Soviet troops for seven years, and Washington’s covert answer has grown into one of the CIA’s largest-ever arms programs, funneled through Pakistan’s intelligence service to mujahedin fighters, and championed in Congress by men like Texas Representative Charlie Wilson. By then the fighters are flying Stinger missiles, supplied since 1986, that have started to even the odds against Soviet gunships.
Jack works the border under AP cover, filing stories and photographs while quietly tracking the weapons pipeline for the Company: a dozen crossings into meet with warlords, visit refugee camps holding millions of displaced Afghans, watching Soviet air raids flatten villages in minutes. What he also witnesses there doesn’t resolve into anything as clean as a side worth rooting for.
On April 10, 1988, an ammunition depot at Ojhri Camp outside Rawalpindi exploded, killing dozens and raining missiles and rocket casings over the city for miles. Jack had left the area minutes earlier. Four days later, the Geneva Accords were signed, and by May 15 the Soviet withdrawal had begun, a process that wouldn’t finish until the following February.
