Undercover and Unhinged: The Misfits Crash a High-Society Gala, Chapter 3

The vault door was three feet of solid, cold steel, tucked away at the end of a corridor that smelled faintly of polished mahogany and high-yield panic.

While Sgt. Salty was currently executing a life-or-death tango on the floor above, the remainder of the crew had assembled in front of Lord Ashford’s prized possession. They looked less like an elite breach-and-clear squad and more like a collection of misfits who had taken a wrong turn on the way to the pub.

McFinleyyy was crouched at the electronic keypad, adjusting his reading glasses with one thumb. “Right then. State-of-the-art cipher lock with a secondary biometric tumbler. Very fancy. Very expensive.”

“Can you open it, or do I need to hit it with something heavy?” Ye Olde Large Lad rumbled, towering over him like an oak wardrobe in a tailored suit. He was currently holding a leather-wrapped iron pry-bar with the casual ease of a man holding a newspaper.

“Hit it with something heavy and we’ll trigger the silent alarm, you great ape,” Dinkz muttered, adjusting his cuff links while keeping an eye down the dark hallway. “Some of us have delicate ears.”

“I’m just saying, velocity solves a lot of security problems,” Large Lad grunted, shifting his weight.

“Quiet, both of you,” McFinleyyy hissed, pulling a handheld diagnostic pad from inside his jacket and plugging a hairline ribbon cable directly into the keypad’s interface port. “This takes finesse. Precision. A delicate touch.”

Whizzley stepped up beside him, cracking his knuckles. He was vibrating with caffeine and sheer nerve. “Give me thirty seconds. I’ve bypassed three of these in Belfast. Just need to bridge the red wire to the secondary relay and—”

“Touch that wire and you’ll fry the whole circuit board, you maniac!” McFinleyyy snapped, swatting Whizzley’s hand away. “Then we’re locked in a basement with four inches of reinforced titanium between us and two million quid.”

“I’m just trying to expedite the process!” Whizzley protested in a urgent whisper. “Salty’s currently dipping a lady in ruby satin to keep the entire Irish security apparatus off our backs. We don’t have time for a lecture on electrical engineering!”

“Salty’s doing what?” Dinkz asked, turning around with a look of profound disbelief. “Salty? The man who uses a hammer to fix a toaster?”

“He’s speaking French,” Whizzley nodded solemnly. “And he’s doing the tango.”

A heavy silence fell over the corridor for two full seconds.

“Good God,” McFinleyyy whispered, staring at the ceiling as if waiting for it to cave in. “The world really has gone mad. Right, that’s it. Fast method it is.”

McFinleyyy tapped three keys on his diagnostic tablet. A small green light on the vault interface began to flicker violently, cycling through tens of thousands of combinations per second.

“How long?” Large Lad asked, leaning in so close his breath misted on the polished steel.

“Twenty seconds if the algorithm holds,” McFinleyyy said, watching the numbers flash across his screen. “Thirty if Lord Ashford hired a decent IT guy.”

Down the hall, a soft footstep echoed. Dinkz’s hand vanished inside his jacket, reappearing instantly with his suppressed pistol raised chest-high.

“We’ve got company,” Dinkz breathed.

Whizzley leaned around Large Lad’s massive frame to peer down the corridor. “Is it guards?”

“No,” Dinkz replied, his voice dropping into a dry whisper. “It’s Sarah and Susan. And Sarah looks like she’s about to kill someone for making her walk down three flights of stairs in six-inch heels.”

Sarah glided into the vault alcove, her green velvet dress trailing silently over the flagstones, the snatched vault keycard glinting in her hand. Susan followed closely behind, unhurried and deadly, checking the chamber on her Walther.

“You lot are taking your sweet time,” Sarah said smoothly, holding up the keycard. “Salty is currently mid-pirouette, and I’m fairly certain he’s running out of French vocabulary.”

“We’re on the final tumbler!” Whizzley insisted defensively. “McFinleyyy’s doing tech magic!”

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

The vault’s central mechanism groaned. Heavy internal bolts retracted one by one with a series of deep, metallic thuds that vibrated straight through the floorboards.

McFinleyyy grinned, pulling his cable free and tucking his glasses back into his pocket. “And that, my friends, is how a master class is conducted.”

Sarah didn't waste a second. She stepped past him, slid the keycard into the master override slot, and gave the heavy wheel on the vault door a firm clockwise turn. With a heavy, satisfying hiss of depressurized air, the massive steel door swung open, revealing the dark, silent interior of Lord Ashford’s private vault.

“Right then,” Large Lad said, cracking his neck as he stepped up to the threshold. “Let’s go collect the boss’s pension.”