LANDOVER, Md. -- An oversized sheriff's van backed into a parking space within two feet of where Andrew Kasmer grilled hot dogs and hamburgers for his group of Washington Redskins tailgaters.

	“	The sniper isn't going to take my freedom away. ”
		— Ron Heath Sr. of La Plata, Md.

Normally, Kasmer might have complained at the intrusion, but not this weekend. With a sniper at large in the national capital area, the security seemed welcome.

Outside FedEx Field, police were on horseback and bicycles, patrol cars were scattered along the parking area's perimeter and police with marksmen's rifles were hidden in strategic locations should the killer be nearby and spotted.

Sniper ambushes had killed eight people and wounded two in Washington's suburbs over the past 11 days. But Sunday, more than 80,000 fans refused to allow the terror to interrupt their traditional pregame festivities before the Redskins' game against the New Orleans Saints.

Glancing at the sheriff's vehicle from Virginia, Dan Millwit of Potomac Falls, Va., a member of Kasmer's entourage, quipped: "We're in great shape now."

The increased security was clearly visible at the stadium, 10 miles from a school where the sniper shot a 13-year-old boy, one of the two seriously wounded victims to survive his attacks.

Security in the Washington area was so focused Sunday on the hunt for the sniper that the Saints didn't get the usual police escort for the bus ride from their Virginia hotel. Near the Pentagon, the team bus was pulled over by police when they traveled on a restricted road.

In the face of such massive and obvious force, many of the fans said they felt secure and reacted with defiance. Still, they had the sniper in the back of their minds.

"We're just treating this as a normal tailgate," said Kasmer, of Rockville, Md. His group had been attending Redskins games for two decades, since he was a child.

A few car rows away, Harold Aderholt and his wife, Kathleen, said they never for a minute thought of skipping the game. All week their three boys, ages 7 through 11, had been kept indoors at their locked-down school. Saturday, a boys soccer game was canceled because of fear of the sniper.

"We weren't going to stay home and hide today," said Aderholt, whose family also has made the Sunday Redskins tailgates a tradition.

Along a high chain-link fence that separates the FedEx Field parking lot from rolling fields and woods, tailgaters defied any fears and grilled their food. Some threw a football back and forth.

But in a sign of the times, behind two cars, a large, blue tarp hung from the fence as an impromptu shield against any gunman lurking in the woods.

"We have a couple of paranoid people in the group," confided John, who didn't want to give his last name.

Others made clear they were unworried, although some said they felt butterflies when they stopped for gas on the way to the stadium. Four of the sniper's victims have been felled at gas station pumps.

"The sniper isn't going to take my freedom away," said Ron Heath Sr. of La Plata, Md., who brought three generations of his family to the game.

Others felt they were certain the sniper, who so far singled out individual targets and in each case hit them with a single shot, would not target a crowd.

"There's no easy escape out of here," said Julie Kimmell of Damascus, Md. "There are just too many people."

While the sniper has been a topic of everybody's conversation, Kimmell said, "He was not going to stop us."

"I don't think anybody in their right mind would try something out here," said Bill Freitag of Virginia Beach, Va. "But he's not in his right mind to begin with."