The Chamber HQ is one of the biggest shot-houses in Raleigh, maybe in the whole state of North Carolina. It’s a mansion on White Oak, a white antebellum sprawl with a pillared porch like Tara, covered with sandbags. Twin trenches cut the streets east and west of it, dug-in roadblocks, anchored by machine-gun nests. Ack-ack guns lurk on the mansion’s roof, to keep the copters off. A half-track is parked on the lawn, under a pegged-out tarpaulin.