"Good. Keep your hands where they are can see them." The woman spoke colloquial English, Canuck accent, but that didn't mean that they didn't have an infiltrator on their hands. At the same time, they were going easy on civilians until they showed themselves to be hostile. Dan let Joe cover the lady as he moved out of her field of vision, still covering her, and moved in closer, to check the story. He also did a fast check for anything that could be construed as an explosive, such as a grenade. It was most certainly an intimate, but cold, callous check, far more professional than Soviet shakedowns of women, which tended to be lecherous. Dan had no time for the niceties, but he also was seeing all threat. He gave the gentlest of presses along the abdomen to get her reaction and came away with the wetness of blood. 

He knew the potential for someone faking a wound to be dangerous, but realized that this was a very guerrilla attitude for an occupation army. It sometimes, out of habit, didn't dawn on him that they were the guerrillas, and these were their tricks now. They all had plenty of morphine and medical supplies, courtesy of the Joe-led efforts at black marketeering. They were, arguably, one of the most expert black market resistance cells in the region. It meant that Dan had a small medical kit on his hip.

"Sorry about that. Can you keep moving? Do you want morphine?" That meant they'd have to carry her. Dan didn't really want to have to resort to that anymore than Joe did, but it might be necessary.

The gunfire going in the background punctuated the need.

"We gotta move. Now."

The Ben and Preston plan worked out, it looked like, as the two experienced mountain hunters took advantage of the confusion to draw blood, but eventually, watching guys go down, the Soviets figured out that someone else was engaging them. Then they reacted with fire, a large volume of it. It was spray and pray, not accurate but still dangerous. With a muzzle brake and a free-floating barrel, the AK-12 was a decent full auto performer, but these guys didn't have the optics to suitably engage at the longer ranges, not easily.

Dan, Joe and the lady were moving along when the return fire started to come toward them. It was longer distance than the effective aimed range of Soviet-issue rifles, but one sent splinters flying from a tree, and some of that shrapnel caught Danny in the scalp. He grunted in pain and crumpled. He rolled over in the dirt. As he came to a stop, he immediately yanked the balaclava off, ripped open his med pack and pulled the gauze out. He packed it on his skull to try and stop the bleeding, though the blood was already pumping down the side of his head and onto his shoulders, all over his coat. Whatever got his scalp, it got it good.

He tried to use his sleeve to clear it out of his eyes, but it was still all over his face, "I can't see, I need assistance!"