Five little rascals go to training camp.

Maybe the last person a small child wants to see is an old man wearing a badge and carrying a walkie-talkie. Usually such a man has a stern look on his face. Usually he's about to tell you something you don't want to hear. Usually he sounds like your father at bedtime.

So when a fifth-grader named Eric Cantor saw the old man with the walkie-talkie approaching him and his four friends, little Eric thought, "Uh-oh."

He was right, of course, to be concerned because the man with the badge had a duty to perform.

His duty was to protect the business interests of a professional team, the Redskins, worth more than $800 million in a football league with 31 other such franchises.

Heavy duty, this. Important. Calls for vigilance 24/7/365. Today's world, as we know, is full of accountants, CEOs, bankers, stock analysts and other thieves.

So, with measured stride and stern visage, the old man with the walkie-talkie approached Eric Cantor and four other children: Sam Kohler, 11, his brother Henry, 9, sister Hannah, 7, and Robert Gilroy, 10.

The Kohlers, Cantor and Gilroy stood near the entrance to Biddle Field, a football stadium in the bucolic Pennsylvania town of Carlisle.