UNDER SIEGE

On Jan. 6, 2021, some 2,000 brave, steadfast law enforcement officers defended the U.S. Capitol Building and the lawmakers inside. This is their story.

- Anita Bartholomew

OFFICER DANIEL HODGES ducked into the relative safety of a hallway just inside the U.S. Capitol Building to collect himself.

Since arriving at the Capitol with his unit at 2:01 p.m., 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 Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department, took a deep breath, then answered a call for reinforcements.

He walked down a white corridor. Cries and shouts of combat rising 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 before protected his lungs and his eyes. Fellow officers were at the arched opening to the tunnel, through which the president-elect would walk onto the lower west terrace in two weeks' time at his inauguration-provided police could hold the Capitol against those determined to thwart the transfer of power.

Officers were stacked about five across and about 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.