As Gabriel Luna sprawls behind a custom sniper rifle on a balcony overlooking a port city, he opens a leather bound notebook to a basic range card marked with half circles across the top. The spare setup immediately defines his side of the coming fight.

Two miles away, a pair of snipers concealed amid the city clutter aim their own heavily customized rifles toward a podium below Luna. The American president is expected to appear there for a speech, leaving Luna responsible for protecting him.

The assassins carry sophisticated targeting computers mounted to their weapons. A spotter hidden in the president’s crowd supplies them with 8 digit coordinates and information about the wind and humidity.

Luna, playing a CIA officer and former Navy SEAL, must counter those advantages with a pencil, an Army Form 5517-R “standard range card,” and his training. Without dialogue, the scene establishes a contest between technology and hard earned skill.

The sniper fight arrives during the penultimate episode of the second season of Amazon’s “The Terminal List,” which debuts today on Amazon Prime. The episode is titled “Every Bullet Has Its Destiny,” the same words embossed into the leather of Luna’s range notebook.

The latest season follows Luna and series star Chris Pratt as they unravel an international terrorism plot. Their sniper confrontation unfolds while the two characters defend the American president during a United States and Russia peace summit in Ukraine.

Former Navy SEALs helped develop the scene and the series’ broader attention to tactical detail. Executive producer Jared Shaw served as a SEAL from 2002 to 2013 and met Pratt when the actor visited Shaw’s unit while preparing for “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Writer Kenny Sheard served as a SEAL for 12 years and was also a SEAL sniper. The series is based on books by Jack Carr, who spent 20 years as an enlisted SEAL turned officer.

Shaw told Task & Purpose that the books already contained a sniper element, but the writers took the sequence in a different direction. Sheard’s experience helped the room dig more deeply into the finer details of sniper warfare.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Amazon Studios

“There is definitely a sniper element in the book,” Shaw said. He explained that the involvement of Sheard allowed the team to flesh out the battle and explore technical points that long distance shooters and special operations veterans would recognize.

“The Terminal List” has become a hit for Amazon Prime alongside action thriller programs such as “Reacher” and “Lioness.” Those shows emphasize realistic military equipment, tactics, and skills while placing their characters in frequent and elaborate combat scenes.

Pratt and Luna enter gunfights in nearly every episode. The season includes an ambush in an African wildlife preserve involving park rangers led by Pratt and elephant poachers, along with a back alley fight in which Pratt frees a captured team member while Luna provides cover.

Episode seven’s sniper duel serves as the season’s peak shootout. While assigned to protect the president, Luna and Pratt discover the snipers’ hidden weapons supply, including CheyTech M200 rifles and the range computers used by their opponents.

“That’s a 2,000 meter gun,” Luna says after seeing the weapon. Pratt responds, “Easy day,” before adding, “Show these wanna-be snipers there’s levels to this game.”

The production’s attention to accuracy extends to the disguised spotter working from the crowd. The coordinates transmitted during the sequence correspond to locations along the shoreline in Odesa, Ukraine, according to Task & Purpose.

As the writers increase the pressure and the opposing snipers bring their shots closer to one another, the visuals remain focused on technical details. “I’m not sure it’s been seen before, showing the vapor trails of the bullets at long distance, and seeing how that round is pushed by wind, humidity, and adjustments and corrections you have to make over those distances,” Shaw said.

Shaw said special operations veterans notice those choices when watching the series. “It’s just those little points of authenticity that long-distance shooters, snipers, operators will key in on and be like, ‘oh, okay, I see what you did there. You guys are trying to keep it real.’”