Leah reached into the chief’s car to hit the high-beam headlights and put the escapees into the glare. When she had done that, so did many of the other officers, but it was less effective because some of the police vehicles were now enveloped in fire from the flaming bottles.

Escapees charged forward between the shooters at the mouth of Constitution Street, sprinting to take the seventy feet as fast as they could to kill or disable police officers distracted by the fires that flared up and the fusillade from the shooters. They wielded hatchets, hammers, kitchen knives, crowbars, or baseball bats. Some threw broom handles that had been sharpened into spears.

Leah rested her left elbow on the chief’s car and fired the M4 rifle into the charging men. She listened to the bangs of the rifles of Gutierrez and Willenz, the booms of the shotguns on both sides of her, the pop-pop-pop of the 9mm Glock pistols.

In the first five seconds the police had shot down nearly all the armed men in the vanguard, but as they fell, the ones behind came up to take their places. They flopped onto the pavement beside the bodies to take up the weapons and keep firing.

Four of the eight police cars had been hit by Molotov cocktails and were burning. In the light from the flames and the headlights Leah could see five police officers on the pavement severely wounded or dead. The loss on the other side was much worse, but escaped prisoners kept streaming to the mouth of Constitution Street to take up the fight. Leah looked to her right and left and wondered how much more ammunition the police officers still had.

She ran to the nearest burning car, got in, felt the motor idling, straightened the wheels, and threw it into gear. It moved, slowly at first, but gained speed. When it was twenty feet out, she stepped harder on the gas and rolled out. As the flaming car glided into the mass of advancing men, she ran back in its wake toward the chief’s car.

As she did, she saw Mark Ballard. He was standing one car over, firing the shotgun. She saw it kick against his shoulder as the muzzle flashed, and then his left hand pump the slide to eject the shell and bring a new one into the chamber, and then the kick and flash again. And then she saw the end, the prisoner’s bullet pound into his forehead and through it, the puff of red mist in the air behind him, and his tall, strong body falling backward, no longer occupied.