Fairfax, Va. ? Linda Franklin, a fearless and outdoorsy FBI intelligence analyst who beat breast cancer twice, was the Washington area’s ninth sniper victim, ballistic tests confirmed Tuesday.

Police were stopping white vans and trucks Tuesday and pursuing new leads gleaned from the shooting, latest in a two-week-long spree that has left nine people dead, two wounded, and millions terrified throughout the Washington, D.C., area.

A single bullet to the head killed Franklin, 47, Monday night in a Home Depot parking lot in the suburb of Falls Church, Va. She had been shopping with her husband, William.

They were planning to move Friday from their town home in nearby Arlington,Va., and had bought supplies for their new house. They were about to load them into their convertible when Linda Franklin was slain.

Although many Washingtonians have cringed since the shootings began Oct. 2, Franklin “wasn’t the type that would have stayed indoors,” said Peggy Hulseberg, Franklin’s friend of four years. Hulseberg said Franklin had twice beat cancerous breast tumors in the past four years with radical surgery. She had been cancer-free for about a year

Franklin had worked in the FBI’s cyber security division in the bureau’s Washington headquarters building for three and a half years as an intelligence operations specialist. She wasn’t involved with the sniper case.

“She loved skiing and snowboarding and riding tubes on the snow,” Hulseberg said. “She loved floating on the river. She’s extremely intelligent and lots of fun and sweet.”

Franklin’s daughter one of two grown children was five months pregnant, Hulseberg said Tuesday.

A son had just earned a degree in criminology.

Witnesses to Franklin’s shooting were able to provide some information on the license plates on vehicles seen leaving the scene, Fairfax County Police Chief Tom Manger told reporters. Investigators also were examining security camera images, Manger said.

Air support sought

They may soon be getting some help from the Defense Department, if legal experts can figure out how to overcome a prohibition on the U.S. military participating in law enforcement.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, acting on a request from the FBI, has given preliminary approval for the U.S. military to provide surveillance flights and other assistance, said a defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Under one option being considered, the military would provide helicopters to watch for or track the sniper’s vehicle, he said. The actual tracking would be performed by federal law enforcement agents flying aboard the helicopters.

The latest shooting took place in a mall parking lot at a major suburban intersection about 5 miles west of Washington, D.C. It’s a more congested area than the sites of recent killings. That suggests the sniper may be taking more risks. At any rate, authorities said, it’s producing more detailed witness accounts.

“There was some additional information that we were able to get from last night’s case, and I am confident that that information is going to lead us to an arrest in the case,” Manger said.

Investigators on Tuesday were relying at least in part on a process of elimination.

“We are … asking questions of individuals, doing research on their whereabouts at certain times and many, many of these people have been eliminated as suspects,” said Police Chief Charles Moose in Montgomery County, Md., where the first five shootings took place on Oct. 2 and Oct. 3.

Since then, the shootings have been more spaced out, with six over an 11-day period, including four fatal ones.

New van composites

Police also released new composite pictures of two white vans, both with silver rooftop ladder racks and no lettering on the side. One is a Chevrolet Astro van, the second a Ford Econoline E250 van.

Authorities suspect the sniper may be using one or both of the vans. They emphasized that there may be only one van, as witness accounts can vary and are not definitively reliable.

After Monday night’s shooting, police said they were searching for a light-colored Chevy Astro van with the left taillight out and a silver roof rack.

Officials asked the public to call a tip line if they owned such a vehicle, or knew someone who did, and especially if they were in the vicinity of the Friday shooting of a Philadelphia man near Fredricksburg, Va.

Police, apparently overwhelmed by tip line calls about white vans and trucks, asked the public to focus on vans without lettering and with rooftop ladder racks.

Moose also urged witnesses to any future shootings to try to remain calm and take note of what they are seeing. He also encouraged them to “be open to being a witness” instead of leaving the scene of a crime, which he acknowledged might be the first inclination of many people. “Stay in the area, as difficult as that might seem,” he said.

The sniper, for the second time, eluded a widespread roadblock of the area set up after Monday night’s shooting. A similar one last Friday also failed to net the killer.