"Hawke, Simon - The Wizard of Camelot 1 - The Wizard of Camelot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

had led to anger and frustration, which in turn had led to desperation, which
had led to eco-terrorism. That had been merely the first hint of the violence
that would come. My generation had grown up with it, and by the time I'd reached
my teens, the avalanche was well and truly underway and no one could do anything
to stop it.

It is with some amusement that I regard the London bobbies these days, with
their return to the traditions of the pre-Collapse period, and their rather
quaint, nostalgically styled uniforms, for in my days with New Scotland Yard, we
looked less like policemen than like SAS commandos in full battle dress. We
carried not billy clubs and whistles, but fully automatic weapons, and our
uniforms were not blue serge, but molded gray fatigues that were known as "urban
camo." Our riot helmets made us resemble some outlandish cross between
motorcyclists and astronauts and they were the only way to differentiate us from
the military troops, aside from the word "POLICE" stenciled across our backs in
large, black letters.

And, oh, how I despised those bloody helmets! The army knew better man to be
saddled with such a worthless piece of junk. I longed for the simple metal
helmet I had worn when I was in the army, but some idiot bureaucrat had
apparently decided that the riot helmets were not only highly functional, which
was debatable, but that their polarized visors had some sort of intimidating,
psychological effect, which was a joke. In any event, only the greenest rookies
used the visors, and not for very long, at that. Most of us simply tore them
off, and many of the hardcore, swaggering, old veterans simply dispensed with
the helmets altogether. Having seen as much, if not more, action as any of the
veteran police officers, I kept my helmet, hot and sweaty as it was, because I'd
seen more than my share of head wounds and I had a family to think of. I did
hack off my visor; however; because I couldn't see well enough to shoot worth a
damn with the bloody thing in place. And, sad to say, police officers expended a
great many bullets in those days.

There is a popular program on television presently called Collapse Cops,
depicting a team of police officers (a male and female, of course) "fighting
crime during the dark days of the Collapse." There is a great deal of gunplay
and camaraderie, coupled with sexual innuendo (the beauteous Officer Storm
somehow contrives to be caught in her bra and panties at least once every
episode), the villainous perpetrators are all uniformly malevolent, and each
program ends with our heroes managing to touch the lives of several citizens and
make their burdens easier to bean I only wish it had been so.

There were, naturally, women on the police force and in the military, but I
never encountered any who were even remotely like the leggy, pouty-lipped Ms.
Storm. The women with whom I served were all serious professionals and there was
not a tube of lipstick or an eyebrow pencil to be found among them. Glamor was
the very least of their concerns and romance between fellow officers was rare.
Given the situation in the streets, I did not know of a single officer; either
male or female, who would risk the complications of a romantic entanglement on
the job. As to the malevolent perpetrators and the citizens whose lives we
touched, I only wish that, in reality, the lines had been so clearly drawn. I