Wendy's words finally stirred the other three into action and they let her hustle them inside the coffee shop. Some of the other al fresco diners also hurried inside having heard what she’d said. They huddled at the back of the shop with the baristas and waited.
“It could be a few minutes,” Wendy said while they waited. “It was in Russia.”
Sure enough it was several minutes before the sound of the explosion and a great burst of air rolled through the town shattering windows and smashing masonry just as Wendy had predicted. The noise was deafening in the most literal sense, so loud it hurt Sienna’s ears and once it finally faded her ears were ringing so badly that she couldn’t hear what the people around her were saying nor hear the screams that she knew must be coming from outside.
She knelt there until the ringing subsided and her hearing began to return. “I-is it over?”
“I think so,” Wendy said. “Let’s see if we can help.” She pulled herself to her feet and headed to the door, or where the door would have been except that there was a hole and a pile of shattered glass and plastic where the front of the shop had been, outside the previously clear day had gone dark and the air was clogged with dust. “Bloody hell! It must have been larger or closer than the Russian one. The damage wasn’t this bad in Russia.” She turned back. “I think we’ll need to improvise some sort of masks before we head out there.”
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