Back at the filling station. The night Zehedi had died. What was Sharon Froman selling Chesbro? "A big regional organization to fight back against the inroads of the South. You and me, Mr. Chesbro." You and me--and Congressman Akslund, it looked like. Mickey Groff shook his head, half-enraged, half-admiring. You had to hand it to Chesbro; he always kept his eye on the ball. CHAPTER FOURTEEN By midnight the United States Army was working one of its accustomed miracles. It involved a number of things, starting with a phone call at noon from the White House to Fort Lowder, New Jersey. A major general commanding a division in training there said to the phone call, "Yes sir," and after he hung up, to his one-star assistant commander, "Excellent training for the 432nd, Jim. Get it done." The brigadier made some calls and then he and the C.G. finished their lunch serenely. The calls whipped Fort Lowder to a froth of activity that looked senseless at first; an engineer officer took off like a bat out of hell in one of the division's light planes and soared over the flood valley 175 miles away, swooped low over promising field after field, and returned. Leaves were canceled for the division's quartermaster battalion of two-and-a-half-ton, six-by-six trucks. Ordnance mechanics of the division's heavy maintenance company swarmed like maggots around a dozen red-lined vehicles under orders to get them rolling at any cost. Warehouses were skillfully looted of parts by ordnance sergeants while ordnance lieutenants engaged guards in casual conversations that ended when they got the high sign that all was well. And the cause of all the activity, the 432nd field-hospital battalion, which had almost forgotten that it _was_ a field-hospital battalion, got the pitch by early afternoon. Long broken up into their training-camp formation, scattered through dispensaries and the base hospital, they were abruptly reminded of their battle mission by an announcement over the base PA system by the division surgeon, their commander.