UNDER SIEGE

Two years ago, rioters stormed the US Capitol in a bid to overturn election results after Donald Trump lost. This is the story of the people who protected it

- Anita Bartholomew

OFFICER DANIEL HODGES ducked into the relative safety of a hallway just inside the US Capitol Building to collect himself. Since arriving with his unit at 2:01 p.m. that 6 January 2021, he'd been cursed at and punched by angry rioters trying to gain entry. One had even tried to gouge out his right eye. Still, he didn't rest long. Hodges, 32, of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., took a deep breath, then answered a call for reinforcements.

He made his way down a corridor. Cries and shouts of combat coming from behind the double doors at the end, which led to the lower west terrace tunnel, guided him to where he was needed. On the other side of the doors, smoke and chemical residue fogged the air, but the full gas mask he'd donned moments earlier protected his lungs and his eyes.

Fellow officers were at the arched opening to the tunnel, through which president-elect Joe Biden would walk on to the lower west terrace in two weeks' time at his inauguration-provided police could hold the Capitol Building against those determined to thwart the transfer of power. Law-enforcement officers there were trying to defend it and the lawmakers inside.

Officers were stacked about five across and six deep, shields up, somehow holding back the insurgents who had already smashed the glass of the first set of double doors within the tunnel. The immediate goal: Clear the mob from the tunnel and secure those doors, which led into the Capitol.

It wouldn't be easy. The officers were up against thousands of angry rioters. (Some estimates later put the number of rioters at as many as 10,000, while it's thought that, by day's end, roughly 2,000 law enforcement officers answered the call to defend the seat of government.) Though they were attacking the seat of American power, most in the crowd had an abiding love for the nation and the Constitution, even if many had only a vague understanding of what was in that document.