HQ's courage and heart (5,6)
I believe the answer is:
nerve centre
'hq's' is the definition.
(nerve centre can mean a base of operations or HQ)
'courage and heart' is the wordplay.
'courage' becomes 'nerve' (nerve is a kind of courage).
'and' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'heart' becomes 'centre' (synonyms).
'nerve'+'centre'='NERVE-CENTRE'
(Other definitions for nerve centre that I've seen before include "Principal source of control over any complex activity" , "operations are controlled from here" , "Organisation's control point" , "control of operations" , "Control hub (of operation)" .)