20mm — The caliber of Saul’s barrel. A twenty-millimeter cannon-sized round is vastly more powerful than standard sniper rifles. The gun and it’s ammo, custom-designed and fabricated to near-aerospace tolerances, helps it achieve extreme-distance hits. Depleted uranium (DU): a dense metal used in armor-piercing ammunition. The Marienplatz sabot rounds are made of DU, explaining the extreme terminal kinetic energy and the distinctive shrapnel recovered from the victims.
The Arabella — A stunning avant-garde glass and steel building originally designed as a bank. Repurposed as the CyOptics Labs facility — Tangent’s classified research headquarters in Europe. Located in downtown Munich on Arabella Street.
Arlington, Virginia — Location of Tangent Global Corp’s imposing headquarters tower. Seat of power for Southerland’s empire. Overlooking the Potomac River, it was standing, figuratively speaking, at the water’s edge.
Ballistic coefficient — A measure of a bullet’s ability to overcome air resistance in flight. Essential knowledge when computing the D.O.P.E. for a precise shooting solution.
Barrett / McMillan TAC-50 — Referenced as comparators to Saul: famous long-range sniper rifles that are similar in concept, though not even close to Zebra’s unique capability.
Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) — Germany’s equivalent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The principle German agency involved in first investigation into the Arabella break-in.
Café Rischart — A famous Munich café and pastry shop just inside the Marienplatz, home to the best coffee, pastries, and treats.
The Camorra — The Italian organized crime syndicate. Terisio Giancanna’s Neapolitan outfit is described as being among the most dangerous criminal organizations with ties to the Arabella robbery.
Chorna Zvezda (“Black Star”) — The colloquial name for the 1st Directorate of the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence). Once the Soviet Union’s top military intelligence unit, it is now General Primakov’s semi-independent “one-stop service shop” offering training, weapons procurement, distribution, and support to clients worldwide.
Cuckoo — Old military/sniper slang (dating to WWII) for a sniper concealed in a tree or elevated hide.
CyOptics Labs — A subsidiary of Tangent Global Corp, officially described as an ophthalmic research and manufacturing facility. Located in the “Arabella” building in Munich, Germany, it secretly develops advanced military optical and weapons-control systems that operate within the Pentagon’s new C&C program, Unified Battlefield.
D.O.P.E — (Data On Previous Engagements) Sniper/ballistics terminology for the calculated firing solution; the compiled data on bullet drop, wind drift, distance, and ballistic coefficient needed to make an accurate shot. In involves using various tools to calculate elevation and windage adjustments.
Fort Bragg — Very large U.S. Army base located in North Carolina. Home to distinguished Airborne Corp, Special Operations Forces, and SFSC, the special forces sniper course. Connelly attended the school under a different name and appearance.
Gateway Security System — Tangent’s proprietary multi-layer perimeter security system, considered to be best in the world. Uses layered physical locks, digital access codes, random code generators, biometrics, and intranet monitoring.
GRU (Russian Federation) — Russian Military Intelligence (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye). The Soviet-era and post-Soviet military intelligence apparatus. Chorna Zvezda (Black Star) was its 1st Directorate, overseeing Europe.
GSG-9 — Germany’s premier federal tactical police unit (Grenzschutzgruppe 9). Created after the debacle at the 1972 Summer Olympics. Conrad and Ingrid Buettner’s employer.
Hezbollah — The Lebanese militant organization supported by Iran.
The Hofreiter König Farm — Conrad Buettner’s parents’ farm west of Munich. At the end of a long narrow road it is very private and quiet. Where Connelly uses a long downhill valley to sight-in Saul/Zebra before the Marienplatz ‘show.’
IJ-Hockhaus office tower (Gamdorf Construction Site) — A high-rise office tower under construction in Munich’s Gamdorf district. Connelly uses it as his sniper hide for the Marienplatz operation, setting Saul/Zebra up on the 34th floor, highest with clear sightline in direction off square.
The IC (Intelligence Community) — Broad shorthand for the U.S. and allied intelligence apparatus. Called an old term going all the way back to Reagan’s days in the White House.
The Irish Walk Pub — An Irish pub in Munich across from the Arabella Labs on Arabella Street. It serves as a de facto neutral meeting ground (“the closest thing to Casablanca”) for intelligence professionals, military operators, and criminal organizations from across the world.
James River Canyon — The river canyon that bisects Southerland’s White Horn Ranch, the Texas Hill Country estate where the Selous shooting range is situated. Running north-south, the canyon is just under six miles long, a high and narrow box spreading out into a wide flat river plain at far end of the Selous range.
Kriminalpolizei (the “Kripo”) — Germany’s Criminal Investigation Department, the plainclothes criminal detective branch of the German police. Assistant Chief Investigator Karsten Wegener is a principle at the ‘Kripo,’ their nickname.
Marienplatz — Munich’s historic central square – described as the most beautiful town square in all of Germany. Featuring the Glockenspiel carillon, the Altes Rathaus new Town Hall, the Frauenkirch (Cathedral of our Dear Lady) and St. Peter’s (Alter Peter) Churches. Many other features such as St. Mary’s column (erected 1638), the Fish Fountain, countless fine eateries, and the Ludwig Beck department store made it the city’s favorite destination.
Maximilianeum — The grand Munich building, home of the Bavarian State Parliament, has uninterrupted views of the Isar River, west and the Munich Skyline, and grand vista to the east. Investigator Schisler uses it as a private meeting location.
Munich (München) — Germany’s most popular tourist city, home to Tangent’s Arabella Labs, the Marienplatz square with its Glockenspiel Carillon, the Irish Walk Pub (Little Switzerland), among many others. General Primakov’s Chorna Svezda crew and several European criminal organizations are based there.
NOC credentials — Non-Official Cover credentials. Nearly everyone in the US IC working in ‘the field,’ as it where, use NOCs. Various nations use similar techniques to hide deep-cover agents.
Olympiapark — Munich’s world-famous sports complex built for the 1972 Summer Olympics.
The Olympic Park Facility — A Tangent-converted warehouse facility near Munich’s world-famous Olympiapark. Bleak and ugly, it stands in stark contrast to the fantasyland of the Olympiapark property across the fence. Built as a secure storage center, it had few windows, and only two heavily armored access points. It’s the ugly twin of the beautiful Arabella few know about.
Overlord — A top-secret U.S. military program. The software component of the Pentagon’s Unified Battlefield command, control, and communications system. Overlord connects every branch and system down to the smallest component into one cohesive whole, replacing a disparate patchwork of unreliable systems that dated back to the cold war.
The ParcHotel — A small boutique-style hotel overlooking a busy shop-lined street in Munich. It is within walking distance of the CyOptics Labs. Known for its outstanding Bavarian breakfast.
Pasdaran — Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC). Former Pasdaran Captain Ali Hashemi Bahramani now works as a senior Arab trainer at Black Star’s foreign operative school.
The Pink Panthers — A sophisticated Serbian criminal organization specializing in high-end thefts of primarily gems, gold, and expensive jewelry. Behind several of the world’s largest unsolved thefts, they’ve never been caught. Their name is well earned.
Polizeipräsidium — The Munich police headquarters. Part of the Bavarian State Police.
Riedel Estate — A grand private estate south of Munich, comparable to the holdings of Germany’s royal Hohenzollern family. General Primakov’s private estate.
St. Rita’s Roman Catholic Church — A restored Roman Catholic church directly across a narrow access street from the Arabella building. Its recent renovation — including a new roof and polished copper spire — was secretly funded by Tangent and used by the Pink Panthers as cover to position a crane used in the Arabella heist.
Sabot round (finned sabot) — A type of ammunition in which the projectile is encased in a carrier (sabot) that falls away after leaving the barrel. The 20mm rounds used by Connelly in the Marienplatz ‘show’ were encased in a multi-piece finned sabot design for lightness and directional control.
Saul — A custom-built large-caliber long-range tactical rifle developed by Harlan Southerland’s engineers. It fires 20mm rounds and is designed to work in conjunction with the Zebra targeting scope. Named evocatively after the biblical figure.
Sevens — A group of secure, hardened servers located in a vault on the seventh floor of Tangent’s Arlington headquarters. Access to the Sevens is extremely restricted; only a handful of people have clearance to access them. The servers house several core programs including the Gateway PSS and Zebra.
Solntsevskaya Bratva — Moscow’s most powerful organized crime syndicate. Top criminal group in Russia. Its boss, Sergei Kumarin, is one of General Primakov’s best customers.
‘Specials’ — Connelly’s term for the unofficial, off-the-books missions his uncle Harlan used to assign him: covert and clandestine, they were dangerous personal operations taking place outside formal channels. He’d sworn off of them until the call came to do one more.
Spetsnaz — Russian special operations forces. Chorna Svezda has a detachment.
Spezialeinsatzkommando (SEK) — A special-forces style tactical unit attached to the German state police. Viktor Beck was a former SEK operator/sniper.
Tangent Global Corp — A powerful multinational private defense contractor — the largest prime contractor to the U.S. government — owned by General Southerland. Its headquarters are in Arlington, Virginia. It supplies advanced classified military technology among other services.
Unified Battlefield (Modules) — physical interface components that function like network routers, connecting each of the separate systems and networks that are within the UB plan.
The White Horn Ranch & Selous Hunting Lodge — Harlan Southerland’s private Texas Hill Country estate and hunting ranch where the Saul/Zebra demonstration takes place. Features exotic African big game, a shooting range elevated above the James River canyon, and a hunters’ lodge.
Zebra — A highly classified AI-assisted digital targeting scope developed for use with Saul. It combines live and digital imagery from multiple sources into a 3D video stream, overlaying the bullet’s projected path onto a real-time image of the target — effectively providing a virtual first-person point-of-view from the bullet’s perspective. Its control software, run from Arlington’s secure servers, provides the AI-driven targeting and image synthesis that makes extreme-range shots possible.
Zürich / Zurich — The only city where East and West can meet on friendly terms. The Irish Walk Pub — “Little Switzerland”— mirrors the special vibe present in this unique and beautiful city.